Working with Ice Resin & Silicone Mold Putty
Published On: 11-25-2011 10:29pm
Comments: 0 - Hits: 87
Category: Tips & Techniques
I've been doing a lot of trial and error with the Ice Resin. My set-up is not always ideal & I got kind of frustrated with some of my efforts around Halloween. I talked to a fellow Ice Resin user who has more experience than me who works at a local bead store: Fusion Beads. Based on that discussion and my experiences I made a few changes to my work set-up. I use rectangles of cardboard covered with standard garbage bag material as my portable work space. The Ice Resin doesn't stick to the garbage bag. The only problem with this is that the cardboard gets dented & uneven after awhile. I may eventually switch to a dedicated cookie sheet or something. For now, I mostly use the cardboard to pour on and then transfer the pieces to a garbage bag covered table that is level. I have a craft light set up on it to help with the air bubbles. I have now moved that table to be near the radiator heater I use in my room. This has helped to decrease my bubble issues in general. I don't turn the heat up - it's more that the temperature is more level near the heater than across the room where I had the table before. The down side is it makes the space narrow on that side of the bed - which is part of why I don't want to constantly work with Ice Resin. It should be noted that after a day of curing, when the resin has become pretty solid, it is possible to move items elsewhere as needed.
I'm starting to do more experiments with Silicon Putty in order to have more of my components be hand made as well as to offer a wider variety of colors. I'm also avoiding having to take up yet another hobby: working with polymer clay. I just really don't have the room or time for more crafts right now. It's not as easy to make molds as it might seem. It's difficult to get the pressure right for a level mold. I've also discovered it can be difficult getting smooth edges and to not accidentally distort the mold while pressing the items into the putty. I've purchased silicone molds when I can but they are not always available for the items I want. It may seem simple enough to make a mold out of a cameo I already have, and I have indeed done this now, but my first experiments with them have had mixed results. I need to see if I can fix some issues around the edges of the mold to avoid having to do a lot of sanding in future. Even minor issues can negatively affect the overall look of an item.
Larger items take a large amount of the putty to make - there's just no getting around that. This is something to consider as the putty is on the pricey side and not everyone carries it. One of the issues I've had is not getting some of the item details pressed in deep enough because I was trying to be too economical with my silicone putty. In the end, it didn't save me anything because I need to make an entirely new mold for at least two of the items. There's a relatively short amount of time to work with the putty before it starts setting - just a few minutes really. The good news is that I have successfully made a patch of new putty onto formed putty when I found I had a hole where the item poked through the putty slightly. So, it should be possible to do some repairs on the molds I have already made.
I made some molds of smaller keys and gears this time that will be a lighter and less snaggy alternative for a dress fringe a friend of mine wants to make. I used tweezers to help me get a more even pressure on the objects as I pressed them into the putty. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the results so far. With the gears, the trick is to let the putty push through the openings to have enough resin to form the gear without closing the intended holes. Which reminds me - resin can expand a bit after you pour it and as it hardens. You need to keep that in mind when pouring in order to not have it overflow & create bits you have to sand off.
Even when I've sanded under water, I've found that I sometimes need to do a top coat of resin to hide the sanding marks. This is particularly true on darker colors and larger areas of sanding. This is why it's important to avoid it as much as possible - because every application of Resin means another 3 days to finish curing. As an example, the skull pendants I have in my shop followed this general time line:
Day 1 - First layer of color poured.
Day 2 - Second layer of color poured.
Day 5 (3 days after that 2nd layer of color was poured) - sanding as needed and then a top coat of Ice Resin (particularly when I'm doing the gear-eyed skulls)
Day 8 - Assuming nothing went wrong, I can now drill the skull piece. Or, if I want to use a glue on bail or otherwise attach another finding to it to finish it, I do that and then:
Day 11 - it's done - assuming all went well and no more sanding is needed.
People may think that using Ice Resin is cheap and easy but it still requires work & is not all that cheap. Even when I use it in frame pendants like in the picture above, I may do more than one pour to finish it off. I started experimenting with levels of resin on some of my Halloween pendants - particularly the ones with bats. On some I have a bat on the bottom level, I let that cure for a day, then I do another bat or two on top of that level. After that I may be done or I may let that cure fore a day and then do a finishing dome effect on it (which depends on if I've managed to leave myself enough room for that). Sometimes I manage to get it done in one pour. That still takes 3 days to complete. Depending on what you do, it can be cheaper & quicker to make several items at once. Sometimes it's more about making unique items than making items quickly.
This time around I also experimented with doing some layering in more traditional molds used with Ice Resin. I plan to do some more experimenting with this. The only issue is that it can somewhat limit my drilling options. I may not have the room to drill through a piece vertically, for example - which I did to make some Steampunk earrings awhile back. I'll figure it out. I don't know that I expected there to be so much research and development needed but there is. Plan for it. Part of it is because I'm making things a bit more challenging for myself in the name of trying new things and to make my items more unique. Trying to rush this process has only resulted in disaster. If you are strictly a hobbyist doing this for your own use, you don't need to try all the things I'm working on. The point is, much like bead weaving, the results can look deceptively simple for the amount of work that item actually involved. Handmade items often involve more work than is apparent - that's the goal I strive for anyway...
