Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Primavera Ficcare Update 2: Epoxy Sculpt

I remembered I had this amazing compound laying around (my craft room closet is an immense horde of random things), and I decided to see if I could use this epoxy-based sculpture mix I have to make the patterned top for a Primavera clip.

After some elbow grease, I'd managed to clean most the Ice Resin off my poor battered test clip, and got out the mold and mold release.  There's still a thin, thin layer of Ice Resin in some parts of the mold, so I knew I'd have to sit down and spend forever picking that out for any real work.  But for this I was just looking for a general test to see if the pattern would work and if the epoxy sculpture mix would hold to a clip.

Here we are all set up with the clip, the mold and a mold-releasing compound:

The first thing I did was mix up a little bit of the compound and press it into one of the cleaner parts of the mold to see what sort of pattern I got.  Not too bad.



The I rolled some out and pressed it into the mold:



Then pressed the Ficcare into that.  The modling compound is cool in that it acts like a clay, but sticks and cures like an epoxy.  If this worked, it'd self-adhere to the metal clip.


And after it'd cured for a few hours I popped it out:




The bad news is that it wasn't quite centered and wound up being a little shorter at the top because the clip shifted.  Rather than stop the test, I pulled off the coating with the intent to transfer it to an Avian clip to finish up the plans for making it silver and seeing how the finish goes:



That's another test clip on the left, I was practicing Violet marbling for a faux border, but since it wasn't centered, I'm just covering it up with the Primavera test.

That mostly worked, but I had to cut off the silver bits that stuck out the top with my Dremel





And then I let it dry:





The pattern got a little muddy with me screwing with it so much, but its promising.  After this I cleaned up the edges, filling in the gaps and then sanding them smooth.

The next step is to primer and apply silver leaf and see how the finishing process goes.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Primavera Ficcare Update

So close and yet, so far.  This time I tried pouring the Ice Resin into the mold, then after it had set up a bit, putting the Ficcare atop of it. 

The problem is that the curves of a blank Ficcare and a Primavera aren't the same.  So there were gaps in the finish.   What did take, however, looks lovely.






Now I just have to figure out how to get it off so I can try it again. Mind you I'm not sure how to fix this (which is why I've been a little stalled on this), but there hast to be a way. 

ETA:  I have an idea.  And I'll have another update soon.  If I have no willpower and take off this afternoon to try, it might be REALLY soon.