New Favorite Store

There are only a few storefronts for "Reynolds Advanced Materials" in the U.S. but we are lucky enough to have one close to home and paid a visit there this last week to obtain casting materials for some new skill learning. The store is at the front of a good size warehouse. It is well laid out with all the different mold making and casting materials and examples of the kind of castings you can make with that particular material. We were instantly in love...

Check them out and obtain one of their free catalogs if you don't already do this stuff and want to take your artistic endeavors to a fun new level!

So this week we dabbled at making some medallions for the doors of this year's mausoleum facade.

Our original is a lute hole cover for a guitar placed in a glass food container.

We mixed the two parts of their brand name "Mold Star 16" mold making material 50/50. Just pour the amount you want of each part into two separate plastic cups, then when you are ready, pour one cup into the other, stir and pour. Tap the mold against your table a few times to get any trapped air bubbles to rise to the surface. Don't forget to spray your mold container with some sort of release agent. Anything to help the dried rubber mold back out of the container. We didn't on this one and did a lot of cursing to get the rubber mold back out of the glass container. Later we used spray olive oil from the kitchen which seemed to work well.

'Mold Star 16" takes 30 minutes to cure.

Once it's cured your ready to poor your cast material. We used brand name "Smooth Cast 305" which is a white liquid plastic. Again measure out in separate cups 50/50, pour one cup into the other, stir thoroughly and pour into your mold. Tap the mold on the table to get any bubbles to rise to the surface. "Smooth Cast 305" hardens in 15 minutes so don't waste time pouring it before the hardening process begins.

The medallions needed some crosses so they were also cast in plastic and super glued to the medallion. Medallions ready for their faux metal finish!

We're still experimenting with making 3D items with detail on all sides. It's a bit more advanced but Belinda found lots of You Tube assistance.

The door of our Mausoleum will be faux metal of some sort so we also needed bolt heads to glue to the actual wood or styrofoam constructed doors. This photo does not do justice to the amount of detail you can get. We learned to cast them in our class at the Halloween Extreme convention, so we already had the mold. The cross finials are still a work in progress. Once they get a rust technique for the final finish I think they will look okay.

A little pre-season crafting to get us warmed up for this years new props at Shingle Creek Manor!