Tag Archives: mold

Casting the Bird is Back

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

A few days and many hours later, casting the bird is back on track. At least I think it is. My new plaster mold is cured, sealed, and I have put it to use. I cast Fat Baby Bird #16 very hastily late in the evening, and it was not well done. I did prove the mold is good, and I do have another bird that I will count to the edition, but …

Truth is I did a poor job of it. I did not mix enough cement, and I tried using a “slip” before filling. I should have pre-measured everything and had a good set up so I could work faster. RapidSet cement is true to its name. The product thickened quickly, and I ended up with several conspicuous voids in my cast.

I could certainly have patched and painted these so that no one would be the wiser. However I chose a different solution: Fat Baby Bird #16 is “Wounded Baby Bird”. I chose to make these voids more conspicuous rather than less so. Now Wounded Baby Bird is painted in raw Sienna with silver highlights, and the voids feature black or red glitter or gold paint. Here is #16 before and after full color.

Fat Baby Bird #15 sits pretty in front of my studio. With a vivid three tone paint job plus a silver beak, he/she is hard to miss. I will keep her/him right here in my yard for a bit:

So for now, #15 and #16 are happy enough here at the studio. But perhaps someone will want to take them to new homes soon. My baby bird adoption fee is a mere $200.

Casting the bird is back on track whenever numbers 17-25 are wanted. My limited edition will stop there.

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Another Addition to the Edition of Fat Baby Birds

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

I have completed another addition to the edition of Fat Baby Birds: I have my newest fat baby bird painted and ready for a clear coat! Number 10 of the limited edition casts from my hand carved limestone bird is “Green Eyed Baby Bird”! Green Eyed Baby is very charming, in lighter subdued & variegated yellow and umber tones. She? or he? is a commissioned cast destined as a gift, and will be picked up by the new owner tomorrow or Friday.

I may still need to create a base for FBB #10, that has not yet been decided. For now, she just sits on her own two yellow “feet”.

I may need to make #11 very soon, as yet another addition to the edition of Fat Baby Birds. I would love to install one or more of these at some of the Larry Scott Trail parking lots!

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Birds in Nest not a Replica

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

Birds in Nest Jade II, my new cast, is not a replica, even though I made this using the new mold of my oil-based clay model Birds in Nest. Read on to find out why! Love, protection, nurture & safety are all present in this small sculpture. A mother bird protects and nurtures two chicks who snuggle to her breast for warmth and safety.

The new, second mold I used for this corrects a major flaw in the first mold. The new mold also includes some improvements I made to the original clay model. So I have a better mold of an improved original work.

About this Cast

But what makes this cast unique? Well, a few things! First I should explain: I just don’t really “do” editions. They bore me! I am a creative artist, unwilling to become a technician unless I really need to. I prefer to experiment and to play. So this first cast in the new mold has a few experimental and custom features!

Birds in Nest Jade II is a mixed media cast: I cast the birds in a custom tinted resin, with “inclusions” of natural quartz and fragments of hardened colored resin. These are not prominent, but are visible. The inclusions show slightly in upper part of the piece, in the baby bird’s head, in the mother birds wing, etc. I believe this makes the piece more interesting, with a bit of the variety of natural stone. I used acrylic modified cement for the birds’ nest. The two materials were poured into the same mold, a few days apart. I have joined the two parts securely by embedding threaded hardware across both sections.

Once I removed my birds from the mold, I cleaned and smoothed a few imperfections, and added a special touch: this mother bird holds food for her young. It is perhaps a worm, or a tiny fish… I certainly don’t know!

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Making molds from sculpture

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

I have two new molds, both molds from sculptures of birds. My first stone carving, Fat Bird, will soon be available as a limited edition cast. And I have a new, better mold of my Birds in Nest.

It was a long working day yesterday! I applied several coats of (the orange) silicone for both of these molds, using Smooth-On Rebound 25 platinum silicone. Mold-making can be an endurance exercise! It is tedious work to carefully apply coats every 45-60 minutes. Once the first coat has been applied, the timing for subsequent coats is important, and the work is messy and requires my full attention.

This morning I made the plaster “bandage” two piece mother molds. The layers of gauze plaster strips are applied in one go, but the first sections must set before the second sections are built. So I completed the plaster sections more quickly than the silicone inner molds, but I find the work just as messy and finicky. It is now mid-afternoon, and I just carefully removed the (almost dry) rigid plaster mother molds. It is a great relief to get these off without any problem.

I built up a cut seam in the silicone for Birds in Nest, but the Fat Bird is a glove mold. I wanted to avoid a seam, but I worried about removing the mold. And I did have to cut the thickened flange to remove it, so I will have to be very careful not to tear it!

Tomorrow I may pour a cast if I have the energy! I may need a recovery day! Also I don’t know if I will use my usual RapidSet cement for Fat Bird. Perhaps I will look into using a stone dust product instead.

example of cast from the first, bad mold of the birds in nest
Fourth cast from 1st mold



I have painted this third cement cast from that first defective mold of Birds in Nest. This mold is now completely missing the defective first detail coat of silicone, but is still a usable mold. I have four casts from this first mold: the first is my translucent jade green resin cast, the other three are cement. This cast has black cement color added to the mix, and has been dry rubbed with metallic paints, and sealed.

Before making the new mold, I increased the depth of detail on the original, and I added a bit more material all around the base/nest to make it more complete. This brings the bird up of the surface all the way around, and makes the piece looks better from the back! And this time I used the right silicone for all the mold coats!

So I expect to like the new casts better, but they will be very similar to this one.

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Epoxy Resin

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

I am plunging back into the world of mold-making and casting. I am not good at this, and I struggle with being precise and methodical (boring :-))! But I want to create useful molds of a few difficult pieces modeled in oil-based clay. I find this difficult, and would love to have help.

I sprayed the clay model with clear gloss acrylic before making a pourable silicone block mold. The mold is not completely 3-D, as the back is not enclosed. So the resulting resin cast is flat & must “lie down”. Not sure why I chose bright metallic copper powder in the mold; it is rather ghastly.

I had to slit more of the block mold than planned to remove the clay and be able to remove the castings. This first cast was made with old resin, and is fragile, with a rough pitted surface texture. The feet broke off in the mold, and had to be glued on! I hope the next cast, now curing, will be more successful.

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