Adventures in Casting: Rings

jesseesuem — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:15:58 +0000

Lately 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!!

an Art School Dropout's life » test

Adventures in Casting: Rings