Silk Clay, and Some More Friendly Plastic Embellishments

Friendly Plastic

I have made quite a few more Friendly Plastic embellishments from the pair of wings with a heart mould, and also a couple of faces from my Sculpy face mould which I have had for quite a while but not yet used.

I shall use these faces for my angel project. All the wings have now been painted with black gesso and will be finished with gold gilding wax and red acrylic paint as before.

On the left in the photo are some Friendly Plastic embellishments which have been coloured with silver and gold gilding wax. Most of these are from my existing stash. I am currently putting together a small collection of embellishments, die-cuts, paper flowers, backgrounds etc. etc. as a gift for someone who needs a bit of cheering up, and these Friendly Plastic pieces will go in that parcel. On the right you can see the faces mould and the pair of wings with a heart mould.

Silk Clay

The silk clay I ordered has arrived in the post. I ordered a small tub (40g) to try, but because it is so light, there’s plenty in the tub to make quite a few pieces and to experiment. If this is successful, a larger tub is available. Silk clay is a type of self-hardening (air drying) polymer modelling clay which cures to a rubbery, flexible consistency. It can be painted with a variety of media, both water and alcohol based.

There are lots of available colours, but I bought white because I thought it would be more versatile and useful.

From the next picture you can see the consistency of the clay. It is like very soft marshmallow, quite foamy and easily mouldable, and it has a slightly strange, but not unpleasant odour.

After experimenting a bit to find the best way to press this into the mould, I ended up by rolling out a piece quite thin, and then rolling it onto the mould, not worrying about it going over the edges of these very shallow moulds.

I made these moulds from Amazing Mould Putty, a two-part silicone rubber which you mix together and which cures to a flexible rubber after a few minutes. These particular moulds were made from very thin metal angel wings, and have presented me with a problem because the moulds are so shallow, and it is hard to get enough strength without brittleness from the various media I have tried with them. The best results so far have been from Friendly Plastic pellets – a low-melting point plastic, which resulted in quite strong pieces with enough flexibility not to break.

Here is the piece removed from the mould. In order to avoid stretching it, I turned the whole thing over, and gently peeled the mould back from the piece, leaving it on the craft sheet.

It was a simple matter to trim the excess away with scissors. You have to be careful when doing this because if you allow any part of the object to touch another part, it will stick, and when you try and pull it apart, it stretches, ruining the piece and necessitating starting again. The cut away pieces will also stick, so care needs to be taken.

The completed piece.

Several other pieces drying. The drying time varies according to temperature and humidity, I think – I have left them overnight, and in the morning I shall see how flexible they are.

These pieces are very thin, and may not be strong enough to be used alone. I have an idea that the definition of the moulded texture has diminished slightly since being removed from the mould. If they are not strong enough, my plan is to stick them onto a card backing, which I may emboss first for interest.

Watch this space for progress! I am grateful to Diana of Velvet Moth Studio for mentioning this product, which I had not heard of before; this stuff is interesting to work with, and very easy to handle, and I think I may end up adding it to my creative smorgasbord.