Taking a #Cre8time Nature Walk with Tracy Alden for Mold Rubber Monday

Hello! Tracy here with another Amazing Crafting Products tutorial! Often when I take walks, I pick up interesting rocks, twigs and bark to bring home as inspiration for my artwork. The textures, colors and detail always keeps my mind whirling. On my most recent walk I picked up a random collection of wood bits. Their odd shapes and sizes had me thinking of an elaborate necklace fit for a woodland spirit. Being that these pieces were brittle and crumbling, I needed a way to capture the look I had in mind while making it stable enough to wear. This is where Amazing Crafting Products came to the creative rescue! 

Supplies: 

• Amazing Mold Rubber
• Amazing Casting Resin
• Alumilite Metallic Powders - Copper, Gold, and Pearlescent
• Alumilite Dye - Black
• Alumidust - Copper, Gold, Pearl, Rust, Red Plum and Orange
• Acrylic Paint 
• Clean deli sandwich container 
• Liquitex Gloss Varnish 
• Small hand drill 
• Needle Nose Pliers 
• Gold tone jewelry wire, chain and jumprings 
• Leaf beads 
• Craft Knife 

I cleaned up and sanded my collection of random wood bits.

I was careful to remove any sharp edges and loose dirt.

I sealed all of the pieces with two coasts of Liquitex Gloss Varnish. This not only prevented the curing Amazing Mold Rubber from soaking into the wood but gave the wood a satin finish that the Mold Rubber captured.

I had deli sandwich container that I cut in half and used the bottom portion as mold box. I carefully arranged the wood pieces in the box but did NOT glue them in place. The pieces of wood were so irregular in shape it would be impossible to try to affix them to the mold box. Carefully following the instructions {CLICK HERE to view}, I mixed up the Amazing Mold Rubber and slowly poured a very thin layer of Mold Rubber around the wood pieces. This way the Mold rubber would act as glue to fix the wood pieces in place. I let that layer cure completely. 

**A quick Mold Rubber tip!** If you have a Swamp Cooler in your house, place the curing Mold Rubber under a vent. The humidity will help it cure faster!

With my second layer of Mold Rubber, I used some cut up pieces of already cured Mold Rubber as fill so I didn't have to use as much new Mold Rubber, as I did in this Blog Post. I let that layer cure completely – then poured a final third layer of Amazing Mold Rubber making sure to cover all of the wood pieces and let cure.

I carefully removed the mold from the deli container and flipped over the mold. You can see the wood pieces are very close to the surface, with only a thin layer of Amazing Mold Rubber between them.

Using a craft knife I cut slits in the Amazing Mold Rubber to remove the wood pieces. After I have extracted all of the pieces I cut and trimmed the Mold Rubber back just a bit to leave room to pour resin easily into the molds.

I used a soft bristle brush to dust the inside of a molds with Alumilite Metallic Powders (Copper, Gold and Pearlescent). I then mixed up some Amazing Casting Resin, tinting the resin with Black Alumilite Dye and carefully poured it into the molds. Once cured I removed the resin casts from the mold. As you can see in this photo the Amazing Mold Rubber captured every little crack and twist to the wood pieces.

Using a small hand drill, I drilled holes and sanded any edges of the resin pieces, now making them into beads for the planned necklace.

I mixed black acrylic paint with some water to make a color wash and applied it with a paint brush to the resin pieces. I used a paper towel to remove the excess. I painted on some Liquitex Gloss Varnish and applied more metallic powders – Alumidust in Copper, Gold, Pearl, Rust, Red Plum and Orange. I sealed them with even more Liquitex Gloss Varnish to give it a nice shine.

Depending on how I drill holes through the resin pieces, I threaded them onto jewelry eyepins, jumprings or jewelry wire. With each piece having a different connecting element it created a free-form ascetic that accented the shapes of the resin pieces.

I connected the resin pieces together with more jumprings and gold tone chain. In this photo I opened up a jumpring with the flat nose pliers and put the jumpring through one of the leaf beads and a portion of chain attached to a resin link. I added more leaf beads, linked all of the resin pieces together and added a jewelry clasp at the end to finish off the necklace.

With found bits of branches, bark and wood I was able to create a one-of-a-kind necklace! I wonder what other wonderful found objects might be molded?

What AMAZING arts and crafts can you create?

Please share them on the user GALLERY on the Amazing Mold Putty Website! 

Visit my blog Art Resurrected for more craft tutorials!

Until next time, safe travels! ~ Tracy

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