Amazing Casting Products: I'm #Cre8time Dreaming of a White Christmas... or an AMAZING Melting Snowman by Rachel Whetzel

Wednesday, December 24

I'm #Cre8time Dreaming of a White Christmas... or an AMAZING Melting Snowman by Rachel Whetzel

Hello, Amazing Creatives! Rachel Whetzel here... :::sigh::: with my LAST 'How To' post here on the Amazing Casting Products blog for a while!! Susan has asked me sneak on here and there when I have something to share with you, but I won't be posting regularly. I'm taking a break from a couple of my design teams to spend HUGE amounts of time watching and keeping books for basketball, and otherwise being suuuuuper busy. I appreciate all the love and support that you all give to the designers here! Of course, I won't stop creating, farming and generally misbehaving. If you'd like to keep up with me on my other interweb haunts, I would love that. There are links to help you do that at the end of this post, BUT FIRST!!

You might think that something as simple as a melted snowman would be just that. Simple, right? Oh ho ho ho no!! It's totally NOT as simple as I thought, but it's definitely something I want to do again, and now that I have done it, I can share with you what I learned so that YOU can learn from my mistakes, and your project WILL be simple! How's that for a Christmas present!?

HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL NEED

TO MAKE A MELTED SNOWMAN:

Amazing Casting Resin
Amazing Mold Putty curing mat (I made mine by rolling some Amazing Mold Putty thinly, and allowing it to cure). Please CLICK HERE for more detailed instructions on how to mix Amazing Mold Putty.
Multiple mixing cups and stir sticks because each layer of resin you pour will require a fresh set. If you wanted to, you could make a cup out of Amazing Mold Putty, and pop your cured resin out between batches. This would mean you only needed a new stir stick. Unless you made one of those too!
Paints
Fake Berries (I got mine at the Dollar Tree)
Ribbon for a scarf
Glue
Glitter

To get started, you need to assemble all the pieces of your snowman! I guess I could have sculpted some arms for my snowman, but I really wanted some really stick looking arms, so I used a piece of a branch of berries that I bought at the Dollar Tree.

I pulled the berries off of the branches,

cut them off of the main piece to make two "branches" and spray painted them black.

Then I got to work making the top hat, eyes and mouth, and carrot nose from Creative Paperclay®. I used a toothpick to add texture to the teeeeeeny tiny balls for rocks, and to add lines to the carrot nose. When they were all dry, I sanded the hat to perfect it's shape, and painted them all with craft paint. I also frayed the ends of my ribbon to make it look like a scarf.

Once all my snowman bits were ready, I mixed small batches of Amazing Casting Resin, which cures white. I poured it out in layers, and had to work EXREMELY quickly for each layer, so I could not get photos of the process, but I will do my best to explain what I did.

THE PROCESS...

Make sure that your work surface will release from your cured resin. I have made a simple mat out of Amazing Mold Putty for this purpose.
Mix your first batch of Amazing Casting Resin.
Stir your resin, and as it gets how, you will also see it start to get thicker. This process takes only a few minutes, because stirring speeds up the cure. As your resin starts to get warm, pour a puddle onto your mat.
Keep stirring, and as your resin gets hotter and thicker, pour another bit onto the top of your first puddle. This layer will set up faster than the first, and be slightly raised.
Repeat this process to build out your "melty" base shape.
You'll probably notice that there are some lumps and bumps in your layers that don't look particularly melty. (You can see an example of this in my photo near my snowman's left "arm") Don't worry about them too much. Our last layer will be different than how I actually did my piece, and this will fix some of the issues I had with my snowman, and make YOUR snowman much easier.
Get ALL your pieces ready to place onto your last layer of resin.
Mix up one last batch of resin, and pour it when it just starts to get warm in your mixing vessel. Pour it in a thin layer over the top of your entire piece, and get to work placing your snowman bits onto the uncured resin.
Allow this last layer to flow over the edges of your base layers, to create the most realistic melted look.
BEFORE YOU LAST LAYER CURES: Quickly place the eyes and mouth first, then your hat and arms, and then your scarf.* Dribble some resin atop your hat if you'd like, to create a melting snow effect on your hat. Allow everything to cure in place. *If you run out of time for this step, and your resin has cured before you can finish, another layer of resin VERY thinly over the top of your piece will give you the time you need.
Once your piece has cured, use some glue and glitter around the piece to create a frosty look!
Peel everything off of your curing mat.

Now you have a melted snowman that will last much longer than the real thing! This little guy would go great with a cute saying like, "Some people are worth melting for..."