Blue Oranda Sculpts: August 2024

In this post I am going to show how I created my 9 Mushroom Girl sculptures using various materials. I took many pictures, and full posts like this is what I like to continue making for this blog going forward. It was hard for me in the beginning to try to take video and pictures of my full creation process, but I think I know what to do now.

First I started out with a rough form using a mix of Cernit and Living Doll polymer clay. This is my first time using Cernit and it is available now at Michaels. So I don't know if I got a bad batch or not, but the Cernit clay is extremely crumbly. I ran it thru the clay pasta machine and chunks just fell all over the place. Unfortunately I bought all of packs during a sale, so I will be using Cernit again in the future.

After mixing and mixing with Living Doll, I was able to get a good texture. I can't say its worth the hassle. Using living doll alone is just as fine. But I really liked the blue color I was able to make.

So the clay ended up being too soft. I did not use a real strong armature to begin with so it was hard to control. What I did is sculpt against a flat surface and I was able to add all the details that I wanted now.

So the hat is supposed to be a mushroom. The shoulder part is another mushroom. The skirt is another mushroom. And the legs are mushrooms.

It was time for baking and wasn't sure if I should bake the clay on the craft mirror or remove it first. I wanted a full figure so I didn't want the clay to be stuck to the mirror, but I didn't want to mess up all the work I did removing the clay from the mirror either. So I put the clay in the freezer for a little bit and then using the rib cutter to remove the clay from the mirror.

It worked great actually and into the oven it went.

Here is what the back of the clay against the mirror looks like

The sculpt is really flat at this point.

So now instead of sculpting against the mirror I'm sculpting again the baked front half of the sculpture. Actually I don't remember how long I baked the first half for. I think I did do at least 50 mins and at 275F.

So I started at the top and worked my way down, so that I would not touch the areas already sculpted. It worked out alright but it was difficult to hold since the sculpture is so small.

Sculpting did not take too long, it was more did I have time to sculpt. I think I starting this project in May and just finished end of July.

The sculpture is probably still a little bit too flat bit its passable I think.

I think point I thought I wanted to make a silicone mold of my sculpture. Even though the actual sculpting up to this point did not take too long, I just worry what if I just can't sculpt it again the same way. In the past I just used Smooth-on materials for casting, but I wanted to save some money so I looked to Amazon and found this "let's resin" company.

I used Mr. resin casting blocks and plates by GSI Creos in the past, but they are buried under a mountain of other things. and before that I used cardboard and glue gun for my mold boxes. The Let's Resin Mold box was something convenient and not too expective. And I knew I only needed a very small box. So this was prefect for what I wanted to do.

For Silicone Putty I have used Amazing Mold putty and Easymold Putty. These are great but they are expensive for the amount of material you get per purchase. The Silicone Putty from let's resin was a little bit cheaper so I went with that for this project.

In addition I used Klean Klay for the clay bed of my mold box. Klean Klay was the industry standard for many years, but they have since went out of business. Some time ago Blick was having a clearance sale so I was able to get a few boxes cheap. Ebay has some boxes every now and there. I think its worth it to get if you have a small project over trying a new material.

Now I build the clay around the master sculpt. I smoothed with alcohol pads and a brush.

Now I form the casting box around the clay bed. using the Mr. resin casting blocks was actually easier then these pieces. With the resin blocks, that are essentially Legos, I started with the box and then added the clay. when I was done smoothing I then added more resin block layers on top. With the Let's Resin box, its just one layer of thickness and I thought it would be harder to smooth around the figure in a small space. I did not want to make the casting box bigger to save on silicone material.

Here is what the silicone putty looks like. It's blue verse yellow (amazing mold putty) or purple (easymold putty). actually its nice that each company has a different color so you can remember what was used. So the key with these mold putties, is you mix equal halves. "equal" could be by volume or weight. The package specifically said weight, so I used my kitchen food scale.

So I pressed the putty on the first half of the figure. the harder you press, the better the impression. So you don't want to press so hard that the putty has a weak point and develops a hole. What I discovered is that you can mix more material and cover the hole, making your mold stronger. Silicone will stick to silicone. Great, right? Well this specific material is very greasy even after curing for me, unlike amazing mold putty or easymold putty. As a result, subsequent layers did not stick to each other, but they did fit perfectly on top of one another.

If I was not trying to save money, I would go with amazing mold putty, but in a pinch this material is ok to use, understanding its faults. Reviews from amazon are all over the place with this is the greatest material in creation to the worst ever.

Instead of doing the whole thing in putty, after the thin layer of silicone putty, I filled the rest of the mold box with plaster. Generally, if your model material is soft, like polymer clay, you can use a ridge mold like plaster. If you model material is hard like resin, you want a soft mold like silicone, or at least something thin enough to twist out the finished piece. Here its like the best of both worlds, I could use resin or polymer clay if I wanted for casting. The plaster makes it hard enough to get a good impression without deformity. And since the mold in is several pieces, resin will not be stuck in the mold.

But that was only the top half of the mold, now i need to do the bottom to have a complete figure. the goal is to keep the first half embedded in the resin as you pull away the clay bed. if the model comes out, you risk having the new material go underneath the model.

Since I'm using silicone putty, it wasnt such a big deal because the putty is not liquid enough to go under the model even if there was a little space.

I used vaseline as a mold release agent. But since I said before this silicone has a greasy residue it was not going to stick to itself anyway. But I still used the vaseline on the off chance the putty suddenly worked how it was supposed to and stuck to itself.

Here is the 2nd half of the silicone putty applied.

I mixed plaster and let it set. There is actually so many different plasters you could buy. Depending on the water ratio you use will affect the strength of the set plasters also. Here I using left over what I had in the house.

Here is the both halves and the undamaged master sculpt

here a cast showing the back half. I think the details are pretty good.

here is the front half. For this example I did not have an armature rest and wasnt ready to bake this one, so I just pulled it out of the mold quickly

Also from Let's Resin, I am now making a silicone mold using their pourable silicone. So in the past I used Oomoo and mold star I think. The ones that you do not need a vaccuum chamber for. I liked results using those, but I wanted something cheaper. So I tried the 30A Blue Silicone that they had. It was $18 for 20oz. But Oomoo is $30something for 2.8lbs..so I guess they are roughly the same price or oomoo was actually slighly cheaper. The thing is though once you open these liquid silicones, its best to use the full thing. they will harden over time and become unusable. Since I didnt have too many other projects ready at the time, I though going with something smaller in quantity was better.

With the pourable silicone, I did all the same steps up to and including the clay bed. This silicone had a curing time of 5 hours or so. Here I did the full mold in the silicone.

Here are the insides of both molds.

Here are the castings from both, the putty on the left and the liquid silicone on the right.

I got some smooth on smooth cast 300 and made some castings from the liquid silicone mold.

The resin is clear that dries white.

here is the master sculpt in the middle. The resin casts to the left and the polymer clay casts on the right.

I only made 9 resin casts. I would have made a few more from the bottle of resin. The thing with resin casting is that it is actually very toxic. I know when I casting things a few years again, I always wore gloves, but cant remember if I always wore my respirator. I'm thinking no. So over time you get sensitized to resin. I don't think I am sensitized but I was constantly thinking about it. I was reading that liquid sculpey is pretty good as a casting material so I thinking if I will try that in the future to avoid resin. We'll see.

At this point, all the sculpting and casting is done. I did not take pictures, but the feet were a mess, I wish I spent more time on the master sculpt to make sure it could stand. In the end I just added bases. I used liquid gesso for primer.

Here is a group picture of them all painted. I tried to do all different color combinations. There are available for sale in my etsy shop. Two have sold so far.