Hand Obsession

Maybe it's all the creative shows this time of year like "Making Monsters"and "Face Off", but we've really been inclined to experiment with molding and casting to solve our prop problems. Hands have always been a problem. No matter what you can find in the stores at Halloween and try to repurpose, most times it's just not the correct hand or finger position you need.

Hector our poor caretaker from last year is a classic example of hand problems, I mean really, who carries their lantern on their wrist?!

Today we experimented with casting hands and the front of a foot with a sandal using Alginate to make the mold and casting it with a hard plastic. We needed the right hand in a specific position and the front portion of a sandaled foot that peeks our from under a shroud for our new statue.

Right hand casted,  two experiments and the third one with the wrist is the one we'll use.

We were so pleased with how easy Alginate is to work with. It's pretty inexpensive, I paid about $25 for 3 lbs. which was enough to do three hands and the partial foot with some left over.You can cast either a very quick drying plastic resin or plaster in Alginate molds. We chose the plastic for it's light weight and the detail of every pore and skin crack was amazing. There are a number of places that sell Alginate, the one we used is a "Smooth-on" product I bought at Reynolds Advanced Materials. There are lots of videos on YouTube on how to use the stuff but even so the written directions are pretty clear.