More resin experiments...

So, my craft table looks like something out of the Nutty Professor's laboratory! There's lolly sticks, glue guns, more resin bottles, empty mixing containers...and plastic eggs???

Let me tell you a little story....

A few weeks ago...probably nearer to Christmas, actually, I purchased what was described as a Dragon egg 'trinket box'. "Yay", I thought, that will be great for holding something like a Cadbury's Creme egg. I, of course, believe that the 'box' in the pictures was being held in the palm of a fully grown adult and that the mould would be the perfect size for a small Easter treat.

Oh, the naivety! When the mould arrived, it was a good size, perfect for a small egg....or it would have been if the top half of the mould wasn't completely solid! The 'trinket' portion of the mould was actually the smaller, bottom half of the mould...you can barely fit a single Mini Egg inside it, let alone anything larger!

Putting my thinking cap on...

Not wanting to think that I'd wasted my money, I went back to the drawing board (well, more like the depths of YouTube) and I found a couple of videos (Steve McDonald Arts and Crafts and another by Julia Rogers). Steve showed how he made an insert to fit inside a pyramid mould to save on resin and Julia was showing how she made a hollow dome mould. Both videos were useful but I still had to work a few things out.

I decided what I needed to do was to use the top half of my egg mould but create a

silicone insert that I could place in the middle of the mould and when it's removed after casting it should (hopefully) create some thin walls and a hollow in the centre.

Thanks to the wonder that is Amazon next day delivery, I ordered the smallest kit (at a very reasonable price) of 'Let's Resin' silicone mould rubber. I found a two-part plastic egg that was lingering at the back of my craft cupboard, it was pure chance that it turned out to be an almost perfect fit for the egg mould!

I mixed up the silicone rubber, rubbed a tiny amount of Vaseline on the inside of the plastic egg (to make for easier mould removal, again thank you Google!) and poured the rubber mix into the pointed half of the plastic egg. I cut up a few pieces of wooden lolly stick, as recommended by Steve McDonald, and placed it just inside the top layer of rubber so that it could set in place.

A few hours later, and I was able to easily remove the newly formed silicone mould from the plastic egg, I glued another longer piece of lolly stick onto the bit set in the mould, and very carefully tested the placement inside the original mould...it's going to be close but I think it's going to fit.

The Results

I'm actually very pleased with the results, the insert came out of the mould really easily and the new walls aren't too thin, which was something that worried me slightly. In hindsight I could have made the insert slightly smaller with more layers of lolly stick so that the lip section was a bit fuller but after a tiny amount of trimming, I had a pretty good hollow Dragon egg, so I'm grateful that I managed to make use of the whole mould rather than consigning it to a charity bin.

The hollow Dragon Egg just fits a Creme Egg, but not a Lindor egg as those are slightly taller. The large Lilac egg on the left fits a Cadbury's Button egg and the blue and pink resin eggs are filled with a selection of smaller eggs such as the Lindor, Creme Eggs etx.