Adventures in Casting: Piles of Arrows

arrows_001I have been working super hard lately on new designs and tweaking older designs. I have a craft fair coming up in September, plus I want to be prepared for the holiday season.

I am super happy with the colorways this time around and how clean my molds came out. It was actually the best batch I’ve EVER done! I hardly had to clean edges or sand down spills. Seriously PERFECT! I’m so thankful for this too, since a lot of my newest designs require things to fit together and be the same thickness. I’m not prepared to share those just yet though. I kinda want to share them as finished pieces.

For now though I can share my newly re-designed arrow necklaces!! They are much smoother, shinier and slightly thicker. The super smooth mold made it so I could do clear and semi opaque colorways, and even mixed pieces!! I can’t wait to add these to the shop!

Keep an eye out for all my other new pieces. I’ll be adding them to my Etsy shop in batches throughout the month!

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Adventures in Casting: Rings

rings003rings002rings001 rings004 rings005Lately I’ve been testing my limits when it comes to casting. I’ve been doing it for so long, yet I keep using the same supplies and same process each time. Using the glitter as a filler lately has opened my eyes again and all I want to do is Cast things for me now. Stuff to test what I can do exactly. I know how to make a two part, 3D mold (as you can see here) but it’s not how I mainly cast things. I usually just build a foam core box and lay things flat on the bottom and fill it with silicone. Simple. Well, that doesn’t work for everything, like say, rings. I had to do a lot of testing with the silicone and the way I lay the pieces in the boxes. After a few mishaps with the silicone reacting badly with glue, double sided sticky tape not being sticky, etc, I ended up with the pieces you see above!!

The originals were hematite rings. The kind you get at the beach for $1! I’ve always loved them, but they never lasted long on my finger. I would end up breaking them on some hard surface within a few days. Hematite isn’t the strongest mineral.

The mold making was the hardest part really. The casting was super simple. I used a slow curing plastic because of the blended pieces I was trying out, so there’s loads of bubbles in this batch. I really don’t care though, since these are for fun. Tests. I’ll be keeping most of them, and a few will be sent out to my product testers (I have a small group of girls who test out my pieces and send me feedback). I’ve also sent a few to loyal customers already too.

So now a question… Should I sell these? Or are they only worthy of a gift in large orders? I’m not quite sure if there’s a market for plastic rings in weird colors. I guess this is something I should look into!!

Adventures in Casting: Making Molds

Here’s a sneak peek at whats going on behind the scenes.

I’m making molds! I haven’t worked with silicone in almost 2.5 years. I was kinda worried I’d forgotten all the tricks and secrets to perfect molds… but no, It was as if no time passed. I’m excited!!

Oh, and as you can see from the photos above, I FINALLY found the awesome app that is Instagram. How did I not notice all the photos everyone was taking? and then posting? I guess I’ve been in my own little world these past few months… maybe even years… Anyway, It’s making me love taking photos again. I’m taking pictures of everything. CT even loves photos taken of her now!

Do you use Instagram? What’s your username? I’d love to see what everyone else takes photos of.

 

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