Week 17 of 48

Mold! This week is all about mold making—probably a boring topic for the majority of you, but I was pretty psyched to both start and finish this mold in the last few weeks so I am going to share the whole process whether you like it or not! Now that the mold is complete, several rounds of casts will probably be necessary before a successful cast emerges, but I am ready to work for it. Mold making is such a long process, what’s a few more days to perfect the casting process?

prepping the plaster diamond for round one of polyurethane

I didn't want a pour spout so in order to make the mold in the round without a support, I had to make half at a time...

flipped over and polyurethane on the top half

back to the bottom half, prepping for part one of the plaster mother mold

the hydrocal sets so quickly I could only do small sections at a time... this is only 2 sections out of 5 needed to complete each half of the mother mold

first half of mother mold done but look at the mess! fiberglass, hydrocal, plasticine, polyurethane, etc.

prepping for second half of mother mold... not very professional looking!

second half of mother mold done... looks pretty wonky, but I think it just might work...

easily the most bad ass mold I've made to date

Still not done! There is a whole other set of steps to opening up the mold and preparing it for its first cast

All the parts opened, cleaned and ready to go! Wish me luck...

Merry Christmas Eve!

I am kind of in shock that it is really here! Being secluded in Vermont for the majority of the pre-Holiday season meant that I missed out on all the reminders of the Holidays. No commercials, no decorations, no gift buying, no shopping, no Christmas carols, no Christmas food or drink, no Christmas parties, no candy canes, no silver bells, no Christmas trees or ornaments or lights, no malls, no movies, no bilboards or other forms of advertising to remind me ’tis the season. Without all of that, it was so easy to forget the Holidays were approaching and that perhaps I should be thinking about them. Instead, I was spending every moment of my days and nights thinking about candy, sugar, gemstones, diamonds, relationships, forever, permanence, the ephemeral and transitory, jewelry, value, icons and symbols, and of course people, new friends, old friends, potential new co-workers, old co-workers, jobs, life, change, and movement. So without further ado, a few more pictures from my studio… taken almost exactly a week ago!

This is a giant plaster model of a standard cut diamond in progress

A close up of the texture while building up the plaster little by little and cutting it back to keep it all consistent

After roughing out the basic shape, I mapped out the facets and began carving them in with a file. Long, slow and exhausting work...

I had hoped to finish this process before leaving, but I only got a little over half of the facets cut before it was time to clean up and prepare to leave. As soon as I am back in Vermont, I will finish this monster off and then make a mold of it so I can cast the candy in the mold and create giant diamonds and gemstones made out of sugar. Once a few gems are cast, I have a few vague ideas about what to do with them, but I sort of want to wait to see how the casts work before I commit to anything, so we shall see… I also made molds of the top and bottom half of the fifty cent vending machine toys I showed in an earlier post.

Here they are covered in plasticine, ready for a plaster mother mold

I did at least finish these molds before I left, although the food grade silicone didn’t set up in time for me to actually cast any candy in them. Again, these will be first on the list when I get back to Vermont. Cast a few sets of candy into each of them and see how they turn out…