Cast without crew

With my experiments in gluing things together looking good.. I orded a bottle of black latex paint from ebay.

This stuff is advertised for hen parties, and for suitable kinky people to literally paint a 2nd skin onto themselves as clothing.. awesome, and much like the fake legs, not for hairy people!

After a quick successful test to see if I could use it as glue, (since its not exactly sticky, unlike Copydex).. I started wondering if I could actually cast details with it.. Thankfully the local supermarket was disposing of some childrens modelling clay which lead to my 1st experiment of making a mold, pouring a layer in, letting it dry, rinse, repeat etc.. looked a bit like this...

Not too bad, tried adding some silver paint too..

The right hand one, looks a bit melted, where the 1st layer didnt entirely set before I unpeeled it from the mould..

(Extra credit if anyone can identify what I used to make the silver raised pattern on the left cast ;-) )

So I can make shiny things to attach, but how do they actually get stuck to the clothing ??

Seems the trick for glueing this stuff to cloth is; mask out the area with duct tape, paint a layer of latex paint, let it dry, repeat until you have a solid rubber pad sticking out. Unmask the area, paint the pad & the back of the thing to stick to it with more latex paint, gently press into place and leave it for a day or five.

But first, you have to make the things to glue on!

From my 1st experiment in making a mould, I knew I'd never get the details right in inverse, at least not without repeatedly leaving fingerprints & dents on the bits that were sposed to be smooth.. so I figured I could create positives of the parts in wood, then make the moulds from the positives.

At this stage, I should say that Dremels are awesome, very very awesome, and also that you should probably wear a dust mask, and ideally not wave the rotating bit quite as close to your hands as I did ;-) especially not when it's fitted with the sanding rotaty thing of wood eating. Somehow, I managed to avoid any injury, and ended up with these..

Not too bad.. if you try this.. the Dremel is great at eating wood.. but not great if you want flat surfaces afterward.. for that, use a sheet of sandpaper on a flat surface, and take all the skin off your knuckles.. it works better that way.

 Back to the bits anyway, with the positives created, I built the moulds using the clay..  then poured latex paint into each, and let it set.. this took about a week for each part.

That's the 4 bits at the base, plus the 2 top bits each side. Since the top two each side were identical, I reused the moulds, added a week, but since I did the single pair of those first, it taught me a few things for the bottom ones, about drying times etc.

Around this point I should probably mention, latex paint is easy to clean up from: tiled floors, tables, walls, windows, window sills, plant pots, plants, and skirting boards.

Do NOT expect it to clean up well from anything fabric, or hair.

Thankfully my attempt to backhand an open bottle of latex paint across the table didn't meet any fabric. It did however meet most of the above =).

Also worth remembering.. do not shake the bottle before pouring to get an even mix.. all you end up doing is making latex bits full of air bubbles that either ruin the finish, or cause large cracks during drying.. As it dries, it shrinks, which is fine if its one bit, if theres a crack, it'll shrink apart leaving something you have to fix.


Was it all worth it? did they come out ok ? I think so.. more or less, I suspect they need a dip coat in bit more paint to hide some of those surface defects..

Well.. thats the front ones.. about a months effort on and off, making the bits, letting stuff dry, peeling spilt latex off walls, etc.

The side ones I thought I'd try something a little simpler with.. craft foam, glued together painted over with latex paint to match the front panels, and use a little cloth for texture..

Well that concludes this part.. next time, I'll look at the guantlets & the shoulders.