In order to make a beautiful candle or resin mold by injection molding process, a good negative mold must be used. These are available in numerous designs to buy. However, If you want special or simply want to create something yourself, then you can make your own silicone mold with easy DIY mold making methods. This article introduces a step by step tutorial on how to make your own silicone molds for resin molds or candle, using just a few simple supplies.
Why Silicone Molds Are The Best Choice For Resin Casting?
Silicone mold is a special plastic injection mold for making various crafts. The injection silicone mold offers great flexibility, tear strength, chemical resistance, and release properties. And due to the fact that it acts as a release agent, silicone is ideally suited as a material for casting molds. The finished resin objects can be easily removed from the mold after curing due to the flexibility of the silicone.
Another advantage is that silicone is considered non-toxic. The fact that it is used as a common material in the production of baking molds or even pacifiers proves that this material is completely harmless. There is already a very large selection of ready-to-use silicone molds on the market. Especially beginners of this technique can fall back on baking molds made of silicone or polished silicone molds made especially for working with resin.
Materials & Tools You Will Need For Making DIY Silicon Molds
Our main ingredients are gonna be corn starch, food coloring, and clear silicone caulking. Additionally you’re gonna need a caulking gun, a disposable mixing bowl, and something to stir all this together with. A pair of rubber gloves will be helpful. This stuff really stinks so if you have access to one, a respirator or a fresh air mask will really come in handy. If not, you definitely need to do this in a well-ventilated area. This is really all we need to start making our own molds, so let’s begin and show you how to put all this together.
How To Make Silicone Molds For Resin Casting – Step By Step Guide
1. The first thing we’re going to do is measure out how much silicone we’re going to need. Basically just kind of eyeballing it to get the amount that we’re gonna need for the item that we’re going to be molding. A good rule to follow is it’s better to have too much than too little.
2. Next we’re going to add our food coloring. This is going to serve a couple of purposes. First, it’s obviously gonna color it to make it a little bit more interesting, and it allows us to color code these if we’re making a bunch of them. And also it’s said that the water in the food coloring helps to accelerate the curing process of the silicone. You can add as little or as much as you want. Obviously the more you add the darker your finished product is going to be.
3. Then we’re just going to mix this thoroughly. As you can see it’s very sticky and hard to work with. This is where our corn starch comes in. It basically serves to dry it out a bit and make it less tacky and easier to work with. So we can actually mold things with it. We’re just gonna work this into a ball and then we’re going to add it to our corn starch. This is where the rubber gloves really come in handy. We’re gonna make sure that is covered well.
4. Now work this with our hands until everything is mixed together really well. As it becomes more sticky we’re going to dip it back down into the cornstarch. You’ll know when it’s ready because it will be a lot easier to handle without sticking to you and it will have the consistency of Play-Dough. From this point we’ve got about ten minutes before this really sets up. That’s gonna depend a lot on the weather and the humidity, but ten minutes is a good baseline though.
5. At last, we need to go to get this spread out and get our items in it you get ready to set up. We’re just going to take a cookie sheet, flatten this out a bit, start adding our items. This is going to cure pretty soon and we’ll be able to pop those out, and start using our mold!
So, you can mold pretty much anything using just a few simple ingredients and a little bit of time and effort. These things are incredibly durable, you can hand wash them with warm soap and water and long as you take care of them they’ll last pretty much forever and they’re absolutely perfect for any wax molding or resin jewelry casting project that you might have.
