Making a Large Corner Mould

Halloween Fun

Another Boxwood Mould

Boxwood Moulds

A couple of carved boxwood moulds for composition ornament that I picked up recently. These come up surprisingly often on ebay and in small and large auction houses.

Frightfest Frame

The finished Halloween prize frame, the print is by Graham Humphreys and was originally painted for the poster artwork for Film4 Frightfest 2015. This frame was very fun to make and is not meant to be taken too seriously!!

There are various types of ornament and decoration used; the skulls are cast in hard casting plaster, the monster head at the top is 3D printed, the cartouches, wings, the bottom centre ouroboros and cats eye ornament on the other three centres are all moulded in epoxy sculpture putty, the straight outer cats eye ornament is machine carved, the latin text is pastiglia, the two pentagrams are made from spaghetti and then gesso on top, lastly the symbols are oil gilt in white gold. The finish is just paint, wax, and pigments.

Competition Prize Progress

This frame I am making for a Halloween competition prize is coming along nicely. It is completely over the top, but it is fun doing creative and unusual projects sometimes... as a change from the usual antique frames, water gilded and painted frames, and regular orders.

Finished Ornament Mould

Making a Hard Plaster Mould

Here I am making a very simple mould for making corner ornament. A silicon impression from an original carved boxwood mould will be used to make a new mould. The stages are:

• Make a fence from scrap wood
• Fix a piece of glass to the fence with double sided tape
• Smear the glass with petroleum jelly
• Weigh out 560g of hard casting powder and measure 200ml of water
• Stick the silicone impression to the glass
• Add the plaster powder to the water and mix well
• Pour the plaster into the fence

This will make a practical mould that can be used with compo or epoxy putty, not as crisp or refined as an original boxwood mould but a good alternative. 

Halloween Frame

Halloween is nearly here and I am making a fun project frame for a prize giveaway. This goblin head is 3D printed, I have used 3D printed ornament a few times on projects, the technology was introduced to me a few years ago by another framer. The frame will also have some skulls seen below, although these are more traditionally made in vinyl moulds and hard casting plaster.

Moulds and Mouldings

Making a Mould

Ornament Mould

Here I am making a simple mould to copy an egg and dart moulding. It will be used to decorate a cassetta profile frame.

Compo moulds

Using some of the moulds I made recently, I have taken lots of impressions of ornament today for various jobs. Some of them were for this corner sample, the reason the sample has a mix of brown coloured compo and white Magic Sculp is that I used up all my ready made compo and did not have time to mix up another batch.

More moulds...

I've made quite a few moulds recently for different frames, here are some more just after the casting material (Tiranti Basic Alpha mixed with plaster polymer) has been poured in the wooden fence. When set the glass and silicone impressions are removed and the mould can be used.

Mould fences

Three mould fences made from some barewood frame profiles, the ornament impression is put on glass (they are currently on the base wood), in goes the mould making material, and the wooden base is put on the bottom. Once set the glass and original impression are removed and the mould can be used. 

Impressions

I had a good rummage through my ornament impressions today, I always like looking through all the different designs. I really want to make more of these into moulds and start making more use of them, I need to make some time one day for doing this... 

I was searching for a large ribbon and stick and a half leaf pattern, for use on a Carlo Maratta type frame, I found a good selection to choose from. I also found a leaf and shield style pattern which is used on classic Carlo Maratta frames, but I don't need it for this frame.

Boxwood mould impressions

I have a collection of about 300 impressions taken from carved boxwood moulds, that I got a few years ago from a framer who retired. Some of the impressions are rather poor, with air bubbles and other defects but the vast majority are very crisp and finely detailed.
With these it is possible to make hard flat moulds which can used to cast compo or two part epoxy putty ornament which can be applied to frames. It's not particularly straight forward or easy to make the hard moulds but none the less it does give the potential to do so.

We have about 50 patterns made into moulds already, who knows if we ever get round to making any more soon. I do need to make some very thin ribbon and stick ornament for one job, the impressions I have of this ornament style can be seen in the middle photo, varying in width from 3 to 6mm.