More Miniature Bottle Resin Casting Experiments

This morning, I checked the results of the resin I poured yesterday, and sadly, I was disappointed in what I found. A few of the pieces were tacky to the touch, which typically is a sign of inadequate mixing or improper proportions of the resin and hardener, but I discovered something that made me think twice.

Could it be the molds?

In pouring the resin, I made up a few batches of different colors, all from the same base mix of clear resin. I had leftover resin from each of the colors, so I poured it into other molds that I had lying around.

What’s interesting is that, all but one of the resin colors hardened, provided they were poured into molds I had made out of the silicone material I use to make the molds in my shop; however, all of the resin poured into the  molds made yesterday from the new Smooth-On material that I was experimenting with failed to cure completely, regardless of color.

One color, regardless of the mold type it was poured into, didn’t cure, which leads me to believe that I added too much colorant and threw off the balance of the mixture. The other castings, though, have me wondering if the Smooth-On material was the culprit. Perhaps that mold-making material simply isn’t a good match for the type of resin I’m using.

Trying Polymer Clay and Liquid Clay

Regardless of the reason, I was back to the drawing board. What I decided to try next was to use the molds to cast polymer clay bottles, and I attempted to get the level of translucency I was after by:

1) creating a clay mixture with a very high ratio of translucent to colored clay.

2) baking the pieces as long as is allowed by the manufacturer’s instructions.

3) plunging the pieces into cold water once they came out of the oven, which I recently read can help achieve greater translucency.

The results? No dice. Even with only a very tiny amount of colored clay to translucent the result was far too opaque, and this was still the case even when I used translucent liquid clay with only a tiny amount of pigment. As far as plunging the pieces into cold water, I didn’t notice any difference in translucency whatsoever, so perhaps that method only works with thinner clay pieces, if at all.

Where does this leave me? Well, I poured more resin bottles, which will have to sit tonight, carefully cleaning the molds with alcohol to remove any oils that might be present. We’ll see if this affects the outcome at all. I suppose I could use acrylic for the bottles, but I simply can’t handle the noxious fumes–they can’t possibly be good for my health!

Successfully Sculpting Miniature Foods Charms

At least I’ve been able to finish all of the foods that don’t involve translucent bottles, and here’s a little sneak peek of the pieces, for which I created labels in illustration software and applied them to my hand-sculpted bottles or packages.