Alginate Experiment #2

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Back to the alginate and a little more planning with this one. Firstly a made a nice little Sculpey head with no mouth for a replacement face puppet. I made a small wire stand to support him upside-down in a tin-foil lined jar, and made sure the neck was nice and long (as this would be acting as the funnel to pour the plaster into the mould once it was made). Then the alginate was mixed again, firmly but slowly so as to avoid as few lumps and air bubbles as possible, then poured over and into the mould, and tapped to let it settle into all the cracks and crevices:

After twenty minutes or so the alginate had set nicely and I up-ended the jar and peeled away the tin foil.  Carefully slicing down one side of the mould with a craft knife, I was able to gently slide the Scupley head out with almost no deformation - it's good to go again! This is great as I managed to only cut one side of the mould which means there will only be one seam to worry about when casting in plaster:

 So then mixing up the plaster of Pairs, nice and smooth, and gently pouring in and giving it a shake to make sure there are as few air bubbles as possible and it fills in all the gaps:

 Another ten minutes later and voilà, the plaster of Paris version next to the original Sculpey one:

Turned out much better than I had expected and has encouraged me to perhaps use alginate a bit more in the future, although I think might try and repeat the process with latex to see which mould making process works out the best for me.

  



About Richard Whillock

A beardy bloke who is pleased by the production of puppets and the set-up of stop-motion stuffs. A love for the scruffy, the textured and the original.

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