Snow Glow: from stamp to cast

Hello everyone and welcome to my crafty-lab! 🧪✨

Today I’ve shared a little crafty experiment of using stamps to make molds for resin casting. I used snowflake stamps because I wanted some for another project, but you could basically do it with any image. The stamps I used are red rubber, I think they fit better for this because they’re usually etched deeper than clear stamps and so can make a deeper impression for a mold. They’re also heat resistant, which is very important for the 2nd technique I used, but I’m jumping ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning ;)

I explain the process bellow, but you can also see it in this short video:

I used two techniques to make molds with the stamps.

Two-part silicon mold and resin cast

The first was simply using a two-part silicon mold dough. These usually come in a pack with two pots with different colored dough, you kneed even amounts of each color until they become one uniform color and then impress an object into the dough to create a mold. I simply stamped into the mixed dough, using a bit more force than usual to make sure that the full depth of the stamp is pressed in (I probably could have pressed it in even harder, but it still worked beautifully).

The second technique was using hot glue to create a mold. I’ve seen people use hot glue to create quick casts, and I figured – why not try it the other way around? If you work with hot glue, you know that it retains some flexibility when it dries, especially if it’s a thin layer, so I thought it’s worth a try. I didn’t try this with clear stamps, but my gut feeling says mmmm maybe not. Clear silicon stamps come in many different qualities, so it might work with some, but I was worried that the heat might damage the stamp, or the the glue will bond with it (it is glue after all), so I stuck with rubber stamps.

I made sure the glue gun is hot, so the glue was runny, and applied the glue to the stamp. I used a tapping motion to get the glue into the details, and made sure the whole image is covered. One thing I learned the hard, way is you really don’t want he glue reaching the mount (the foam-like part at the back of the stamp), because the glue will bind to it and you might have to cut a bit of the foam to release the mold. But as long as you keep the glue only on the red rubber, there shouldn’t be any problem.

Hot glue mold and resin cast

When hot glue cures it gets a bit cloudy with a matte finish, that’s how you know that you can de-mold your stamp. It may still be a little bit warm to the touch, you can wait till it’s completely cool, I was just too impatient :) I pulled the stamp and mold gently apart, it can take a bit of wiggling, because you don’t want either of them damaged, but in the end you’ll get a pretty cool mold!

I tried casting two types of resin: a quick cure white resin by smooth-on, and Ice resin which is a slow cure clear resin. For me, the white resin worked like a charm. It was definitely harder to get the resin out of the glue mold than the silicon mold, but it did work and it looks great! The clear resin didn’t work as well… I did manage to get a couple of the snowflakes out of the glue mold but some of them just bonded to the mold… It may be because it’s a slow cure resin, and it may be about the material itself, I’ll have to experiment some more for that.

Stamp, molds and casts

In general, I would definitely call this experiment a success. The hot glue molds are not perfect, they’ll usually have a few air bubbles and might miss some details, but - at least with the snowflakes - I wasn’t bothered by that, it actually adds some character! If you’re looking for accuracy, the two-part mold is definitely better, it will probably also last longer, I don’t expect the glue molds to last long. However, hot glue is definitely cheaper than the silicon dough and I did manage to use them several time already (those that didn’t stick to the clear resin, that is…).

The resulting snowflake casts are very thin, and depending on the resin you use they can have some flexibility or be very stiff, and maybe brittle. I plan to add string to some of them to make decorations, but they can be used in a million ways. They are thin enough to be embellishments on cards, and will add beautiful texture and detail to mixed media projects.

If you give this a try do let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear what you come up with! There’s a list of the main materials I used bellow, and if you have any questions please feel free!

Till next time,

xx

Naama

And the glow too! 😍

Main materials used:

• Tim Holtz Mini Snowflakes stamps

• EasyMold Silicon putty

• Hot glue + gun

• Smooth-Cast 300 by Smooth-On (white resin)

• ICE resin by Ranger (clear resin)

• Glow in the dark powder by Alumilite