Studio Notes 12/07/19

Good news – my self-published paperback journals arrived and they look great!

Mould making, like home baking

One of the things I had to do immediately when I poured my new silicone mould was to figure out how to actually pour liquid metal into it without ending up covered in liquid metal. It’s a pretty important thing to work out.

Beforehand, I used to rely on clamps, straps, screws or bungee cords, but now I have a system – a springform cake tin.

Yes friends, it works. I made the original mould in a biscuit tin (there’s a clear food trend here, I know) but I was forced to cut the tin away to de-mould it. So with that gone, I had to use some DIY acetoxy cure silicone to bulk up the high temperature silicone mould and keep it rigid inside the springform tin.

If you’re going to do this, remember that you have to make the DIY silicone second. You can’t pour this high temperature silicone into or onto an existing acetoxy cure silicone form, because the acetoxy cure silicone will stop the high temperature silicone from curing properly.

So far I’ve been experimenting with vents and gates, and pouring inclines – trying things out to see what I can get away with, and which methods give which results… all to figure out how to control the process as much as possible.

I need a hotplate…

Last week I coated my kitchen with wax and this week I’m back to melting pewter. I really need to get a tiny stovetop to live in my studio, but I don’t know if an electric hotplate ring will do the job for heating pewter.

It’s so easy to adjust the melting process with a gas flame – I don’t know if an electric ring can do as good a job with my wonky pound-shop bought pots that probably don’t have flat bottoms any more.

Is that going to be my next purchase? Maybe, maybe not – let’s see if I get evicted from the kitchen by the end of next week.

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Studio Notes 12/07/19

Studio Notes 05/07/19

I got that push to finish and publish my second journal, and do you know why? Because I made a massive mistake with casting my coin and had to do something with myself while I was waiting for more silicone to arrive.

It seems as though I’m mostly reporting on huge failures, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what it feels like to me sometimes!

Still, at least I have enough to get on with to fill in the gaps when things don’t go perfectly.

Mould making, the right way

Confession time – I know how to make two-part moulds, and I know how to make even more complex, multiple-part moulds. I’ve been doing mouldmaking for 20 years now, so I have a handle on the basics… so what the heck is up with my recent run of catastophes?

The simple answer is that the silicone I’ve been using has given me the option of being lazy, and faced with that option, I’ve grabbed at it with both hands like a desperate woman.

Why lazy? Well, you can cast a solid block and then cut it apart, unlike with plaster. Working that way around, what happened was that my pouring spout was too narrow to accommodate an adequate flow of silicone, so with an 8 minute pouring time, I ended up with a lot of silicone that had gone off before I could use it.

Fast forward a few days and another batch of silicone, and I made the mould the right way. Don’t be lazy, kids.

Prepping for a new casting project

I’m not just working on the coin, though. I’ve got a plan for my soap base in mind, and my poor plastic artist’s assistant is getting roped in as a model.

Right now I have to pull up the handbrake on work though, as the studio contents have spilled over (in some cases, literally) to the rest of the house and I have to scoop up all of the leftover silicone that’s been chipped up for recycling and clean off all of the wax I tipped over the cooker and the kitchen floor yesterday…

Will I get to cast the pewter next week? Maybe, but maybe I’ll work on prepping the rest of the things I want to cast at the same time. We’re looking at getting or making a casting flask for sand casting, so I may work on that instead.

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Studio Notes 05/07/19

Studio Notes 28/06/19

Although I’m still pushing to get my second journal finished, I do feel as though it’s been a productive creative week. The written content for the journal turned out to need a lot of research and updating, and the formatting had to be totally different from the first one, so it couldn’t be rushed.

Hopefully next week I’ll have finished the interior and I’ll be ready to move on with it.

Finger knitting…

As a nice, distracting aside, I learned how to finger knit this week.

Am I actually going to get around to using this new skill any time soon? Hey, who knows – I just like the potential recycling/upcycling applications.

Fred wrapped up in finger knitting on vintage sewing machine case

Creating a new coin model

Thanks to my new cutting machine, it’s been much easier to re-create my coin for moulding, and it looks even better this time around. Out of disaster came improvement, so I’m quite happy about that.

My next step is to give it the final touches and use the high-temperature silicone I bought in April to make a mould of it.

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Studio Notes 28/06/19

Art Supplies Haul – May 2019

You can tell I’m back into the sculpture phase of my work. I tend to buy ahead of time and have my supplies sitting around for a bit, but with these purchases I decided I needed them right away.

African Black Soap Base

More soap sculpture? Oh yes.

Since Use Him in 2013 I’ve been thinking about doing some smaller scale sculptures in soap, and it suddenly hit me that I had to get the right stuff in to have on hand for that time when I could jump right in to it.

This is definitely the stuff I need – 2kg cost me £13.45. It’s going to look at me judgmentally from its spot on the shelf until it forces me to make the darned thing happen.

Composimold

I found out (fairly late) about Composimold, a food-safe mould-making material that can be melted down and re-used up to 35 times.

This is great for the way I work, casting positives, then refining them and casting them again. I could have saved a lot of money last year if I’d have known about this! It cost £46.99 for 40oz.

40 oz Composimold - cheapest on eBay.

However, it hasn’t exactly been plain sailing with this Composimold – I got it badly wrong and my first mould was a disaster.

I hadn’t counted on the water content of the material itself and left my paper model in it for way too long. Also, the melting point of the Composimold was too close to the wax in the model.

Next time.

Rasps

I happened to be in Aldi a lot back in May, so I was poised to find some great deals on their special buys.

When I saw a set of metal files for £5.99 I knew I had to have them to work on my next pewter casting – not having any rasps makes metal work very difficult!

Aldi's pyrography set and metal files on patterned rug

Pyrography kit

In the same trip I picked up a fantastic pyrography kit for the unbelievable price of £7.99.

Now pyrography as a craft isn’t something I’m terribly interested in, but it’s the potential applications of a hot branding tool that make it an essential for my current work.

I’ve been using it to model paper and wax sculpture – it’s surprisingly good for shaping and burning away kraft paper layers, and I’m so glad I didn’t leave it behind!

I’m very pleased with what I did manage to pick up over the month – now it’s time to put these things to work.

Art Supplies Haul May 2019

Studio Notes 21/06/19

My Brother Scan N Cut machine arrived this week, and after a slightly tense first day of banging my head against a wall of new software and unheard of file types, I think I’ve cracked it.

I mean, I can’t believe I’d never heard of these types of machines before!

My brain is fizzing with thoughts of all of the things I can make. In fact, I was able to start a new coin prototype without wearing out my hands, and this one is much better than the one I lost.

What swung it for me when deciding on a Scan N Cut was the fact that I could scan in my own drawings. I have no interest whatsoever in replicating someone else’s designs, so being more able to use my own spontaneous freehand drawings was a big deal for me.

Navigating between art and craft

One of the things that interests me is how these cutter plotter machines are marketed. There are no-frills vinyl cutters that are priced for industry, and then there are machines pitched squarely at mostly female crafters, with lots of soft lines, pastel colours, flowery decoration and cutesy names.

These home maker machines have a lot of potential for all sorts of really ambitious construction projects, but you’d think they were only for cardmaking or scrapbooking.

Sometimes the biggest difference between art and craft is simply purpose – you could argue that originality and derivativeness play a part, but then that would eliminate the Jeff Koonses and Koons-lites… so purpose and intent seem to play a huge part.

Designing my second journal is taking longer than I thought…

I’d wanted to be able to produce a second journal within a week – ambitious, I know, but potentially feasible. The problem was that I chose a topic that required a bit more research, whereas my first journal was based on an article with lots of ready-made questions.

These aren’t just blank notebooks – the prompts and questions have to be relevant and thorough.

Besides that, I had to revisit the cover design for the first book and revamp it as I wasn’t totally happy with the print. That took about a day’s work.

Naturally, that means recreating the book mockups, which will eat up a chunk of another day… ah well. It’s still been a great week for getting stuff done – the ball has definitely started rolling again!

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Studio Notes 21/06/19
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