Much of what a design team does is experimental. I'm here today to share some experiments I did with Amazing Casting Products and some wine foil caps that a friend gave me. She was closing her wine shop after 15 years, and had bags full of the caps. You've probably noticed the beautiful designs embossed into the top of bottles of wine. They are awesome, but the foil is flimsy, and the embossing is shallow. I didn't think they would work for molding.
So, of course, I tried molding them, anyway.
I picked out a few caps, looking for variation in the complexity and depth of embossing. One of them, I cut around the edges and flattened.
Uh-oh! I tried molding and casting a couple of them, and they just weren't flat enough. The foil caved in in places and I ended up with lumpy, warped discs. Surprisingly, though, the detail was good where there was no warping.
'What a shame', I thought. Then I started thinking. I had flattened the caps as much as possible, then pushed them into the mold putty. One, I stretched the putty over the cap. Neither way worked because the foil was too flimsy.
But the detail was also debossed inside the caps. What if I used the inside of the caps?
Eureka!
Because Amazing Mold Putty sets fairly quickly, I mixed up enough of Part "A" and "B" for about two caps at once and pushed them into the caps.
Success! And the detail was even better than before. I could have stopped here, and use the putty as stamps, but I wanted to make resin discs. So I mixed up more mold putty and made ridges around each mold.
I dusted each mold with a different color of Alumidust...
...and then mixed up Parts "A" and "B" of Amazing Casting Resin. It only takes about 5 minutes for the resin to set (setting time differs according to the temperature). CLICK HERE to view mixing/preparation.
Since the molds were so shallow, I mixed up more of the resin than needed, and I drizzled the left-over into shapes (which you can see in the first photo). I also trimmed off excess resin from the discs. No waste though. I'll use all these pieces as embellishments for art journals and mixed media canvases.
I was happy with the result, but again, I got to thinking. I had plans to use the wonderful Gelli Arts® Gel Printing Plate that a creative friend had sent me... and I wondered how well these discs would work to leave impressions on the gelli plate. But that meant getting paint all over them.
Then I thought – two birds with one mold! I'd make up another set of discs without the Alumidust, and use those to make impressions. And at the same time, I be painting the discs with paint off the gelli plate! Oh, I was so excited, I was flapping my arms, LOL!
This post is already lengthy, so I won't go through the Gelli monoprinting process, but you can find out more about it on the Gelli Arts® blog. If you don't have one of these plates... you can do a DIY version with Amazing Mold Rubber – CLICK HERE to see how make a custom Amazing No-Gelatin Printing Plate.
I was happy on all counts. The amount of paint on the plate made a difference. In some cases, it obscured the detail, but the imprint still looked cool.
The same thing occurred with the paint job on the discs. The best ones came when there wasn't too much paint on the plate.
Here are a couple of my favorite pages from the printing session. All around, I think I stumbled on a fun way to get the most from my casting and printing projects.
I hope you've enjoyed my 'wine-ing' today, and that I've inspired you to experiment yourself.
For more complete instructions on how to use Amazing Casting Products please check out the Instructions page on their website.
Supplies:
- Amazing Mold Putty
- Amazing Casting Resin
- Alumidust
- Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbooks
- Recycled Wine Foil caps
- Acrylic Paint
- Gelli Arts® Gel Printing Plate
Please upload and share your creations to the
For more of my work in Amazing Mold Putty, zentangle-inspired art, and daily links to tangles, tutorials, and giveaways please visit my "Life Imitates Doodles" blog. ~ Sandra Strait
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I think this turned out to be an extremely creative way to use those wine caps. It is useful to learn about different products and see how they can be used for making molds and then for printmaking. Great tutorial, Sandra!
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