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Basic Mould Making Tutorial

making moulds charm beads for European bracelets like Pandora, charms to be made with resin

Basic Mould Making Tutorial with video making sphere and bead moulds. Making sphere and bead moulds is very fun but a bit more complicated than flatback cabochon stones, because you’re placing the resin around the entire thing, not just on top. Use Plasticine to create a sprue to help the resin pour better and secure the master within the housing. Don’t worry if these words are new to you, you can see in the video. It’s really important to get the right size and shape for the Plasticine sprue dots to avoid the pouring spout being too big, too small or too fragile.

Mould Making Supplies

Optional

 

You can skip a lot of the work here by cutting out little circles of double sided tape and popping the sphere directly on top but the trouble is they tend to move around, and because the silicone around the hole is very thin it can tear easily, no matter how tear resistant your silicone. I like to secure the masters on a little platform that’s the right width and height. It’s a bit fiddly but worth the effort for a decent mould for high quality jewellery.


I find any bubbles in my resin come up into the pouring spout with a little persuasion. For this you’ll need Plasticine! Raid your kids’ craft stash or buy some but trust me, Playdoh won’t work. It dries out and the same goes for other mould making clay. Blu Tack is too hard to work. You could try an oven bake polymer clay like Sculpey if you have it, because it won’t dry out, but I think Plasticine is a little less expensive.


Using Plasticine in Making Moulds

I take a piece of label backing, because we get through tons of it with our shipping labels and order notes. It’s totally non-stick which helps when transferring the little “dots”. Roll a piece of plasticine out about as thick as 6 playing cards. Precious metal clay artists probably have those already taped up, everyone else don’t worry about buying cards, you’ll find the perfect thickness as you go or you can just get a cheap adjustable rolling pin.

For charm beads you need the dot to be ever so slightly bigger than the opening of the charm. The openings are normally 5mm so I use a 6mm stainless steel hole punch to cut out the dots and put them aside. Cut out as many as you need then prepare your 20ml plastic shot glasses (it’s really important to get the 2cl or 20ml plastic ones, especially if you’re using the expensive water clear silicone, because a 30ml container will need 10ml more resin. If you’re making 20 moulds, that would be an extra 200ml or 7oz or silicone. I prefer not to have too much silicone in my moulds because it gives me a clearer view of my silicone cast and the finished piece is easier to remove.

I used to use an additional single dot on the inside of my own donut shaped charm moulds and letters for other shapes (SL, S, M, L). Now I don’t worry because they’re the only kind I make, but we’ve just started using 11mm spheres as standard instead of 9mm and my new 11mm ones I’ve made for the Mould Making Spheres blog I used a pair of pinking shears to cut the bottom so they look different to my 9mm moulds. Pinking shears are great for making cloth baby wipes and family cloth from rags and have saved me a fortune over the years…

Transferring Bead and Sphere Masters

Give your charm bead master a good polish with a lint-free polishing cloth like these then use a cheap paint brush to fit inside the master’s core and push it up.  Put the round end of the paint brush into the dot enough to pick it up and transfer it to the shot glass.  Press the dot right down onto the base of the glass and then gently push the master on top of it, without squashing it down too hard.


Please see our blog about silicone to learn how to calculate the silicone volume, weigh, mix, de-gas and pour, and how to finish the moulds off.

Using Moulds To Make Beads and Spheres

You can see my own charm bead designs here and I spend a lot of money on my brandstamped cores. I’m planning a blog about finishing and setting resin jewellery soon but I just quickly want to say that even if a charm insert/grommet is 925 stamped that doesn’t guarantee it’s solid sterling silver! If you’re getting 50 inserts for $5 they just aren’t, sorry. The charm bead cores you need are 5mm hole ones, which have a lip that’s 1.2mm. Sadly that’s not very thick so you need to be careful. I used to sell inserts with a 3mm lip with a heart on but had to stop due to my chronic fatigue. If you want lots of practice, instead of buying silver plated (it peels off and clients rarely buy it on purpose) you could try brass inserts.

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mould (UK) = mold (US) thanks for the heads up Robin! Mwahhh x
calliper (UK) = caliper (US)
jewellery (UK) = jewelry (US)

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Our links should work for the following countries to find a suitable product. United Kingdom, Canada, Deutschland, France, España, Italia, Japan. If the link does not work please contact me so we can help you find what you’re looking for.





Video transcript
Basic Mould Making
Welcome to Keepsaker Supplies. I’m Nikki Kamminga and this basic mould making video is an introduction to making silicone sphere and bead moulds for resin jewellery. You’ll find the link to all the supplies I’m using in the description and if you’ve got any questions, please leave me a comment.

Lay out all of your supplies then give all of your sphere and bead masters a quick polish. It’s really important to double check they’re the correct size. Here I’m using 11mm stainless steel spheres and medium bead mould masters which you can purchase from KeepsakerSupplies.com

Then I’m using Plasticine to create sprues, giving you a nice pouring spout for the resin when you’re using the moulds.

For small sphere moulds you can create “worms” which I cut into small pieces and roll into balls for the sprues. If you have one, use a polymer clay extruder tool to make nice even worms. It helps make sure that your sprues are even and uniform in size. You could use sprue wax for metal casting but I find Plasticine leaves less residue on my mould masters.

Alternatively, I’m rolling out some Plasticine and cutting out 5mm discs with a leather punch tool. Usually though I prefer to extrude larger worms and cut them into slices because it’s quicker. You can roll them into balls if you prefer or leave them as discs like I’m doing here.

Use some long nose pliars to pick up each sphere, give it another quick polish, be careful not to leave fingerprints, place it on some Plasticine then transfer it into the 20ml disposable shot glass we’re using as mould housing. It takes a bit of practice so don’t worry if they fall off at first, be patient and you’ll get the knack of it.

The technique for large hole beads is almost the same, you’ll need the discs around 6mm or so, just enough to cover the hole. I sometimes use a round paint brush handle to transfer the bead to the shot glass.

Once all of your masters are ready in the housing, you’re ready to measure, degass and pour your silicone.

In our Advanced Mould Making Course, coming later this year, I’ll be showing you how to do all of this along with other techniques. We’ll learn to make mould housing for various projects by recycling household items, which types of silicone work and which don’t work, and how to maximise space with flatbacks and stones. I’ll also show you how to create your own mould masters or blanks with polymer clay, laser cut acrylic or a 3D printer.

To remove the shot glasses, give them a crunch and they come off very easily. These are plastic-free shot glasses but unfortunately they can’t be reused. You can reuse the Plasticine though! If you’re using a good brand of silicone the masters should be easy to remove without tearing or cutting the mould. I find that customers prefer if a mould isn’t cut, otherwise you get imperfections in the resin cast.

Use a pair of scissors or a cuticle trimmer to remove the excess silicone from around the base. You can wrap the mould masters in some fabric or bubble wrap but I tend to store them in a bag. Don’t get the stainless steel wet, or it can rust. The moulds don’t need to be washed before use.

I always recommend customers do a test cast with resin before use, to check the moulds for imperfections and make sure it’s the mould they need. Jewellery moulds are really fun to make if you’re able to invest in the equipment and learn. They have a good profit margin and I’m happy to answer any questions you have in the comments. I use water clear silicone because you need clear moulds for UV resin, which I use for all of my keepsakes. I have two free courses for making breastmilk and memorial jewellery on KeepsakerSupplies.com and please follow for more mould making and resin tutorials.

Now relax, and do some crafting!

2 thoughts on “Basic Mould Making Tutorial

  1. […] blog has moved to our sister site, Keepsaker Supplies. Hope you […]

  2. […] respiratory system. We have separate findings and finishings posts here, how to set a resin sphere, how to make a resin charm bead and more being added all the […]

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