You asked for it and we listened!  Our new mold-making and casting kit contains the best of Townsend Atelier’s products in one box.  With this kit, you can make several highly detailed molds, produce multiple castings from them, and apply different finishes on your castings to achieve a wide variety effects like polished bronze, darkened bronze, or bronze with a beautiful green patina.  Cured resin castings can also be primed and painted.   This versatile and easy to use kit contains Knead-a-Mold®, Townsend Casting Resin™, Bronze Metal Coating, Tiffany Green Patina, and Darkening Patina.  Pieces may be placed outdoors after applying a good sealer.  Instructions included. 
Click here to learn more.
Click here to purchase.

Safe, easy, captures fine details, very quick cure and drying time. 
Perfect for:  Sculpture, restoration, jewelry, crafts, hobbies, embellishments and more.

make a mold, pour in resin, demold and then paint with bronze metal coating or add patinas.

Shown above (left-right): casting resin with no finish, casting resin with bronze coating, casting resin with bronze coating and tiffany green patina.

SMALL CONCRETE CASTING by Andrew Goss | 2009
I’ve recently completed a short series of wall-mounted pins (brooches), playing on the idea that things–jewelery objects in particular–really change when the material changes, even if the form is identical. It’s interesting to compare the value we place on precious metals compared to more utilitarian materials. The sets of three pins are based on one original pod-like form made from fusing silver sheet and wire. This is a technique where you are working with the silver in it’s “slush phase”, the red-heat temperature range where the silver is above a solid, but below a liquid. You can fuse pieces of silver together, scrape texture into the surface, break pieces off, melt wire into the surface. After immersing in acid to remove oxides, the surface is burnished, but a lot of the roughness and spontaneity of the process remains. Here’s a picture of one of the sets:

The silver pin is the one in the middle. On the left, I used a black-pigmented cement mixed with stone dust and additives. On the right, I used white Portland cement with stone dust and additives, and after it was set I rubbed in a thin slurry of pigmented cement, which was mostly then rubbed off.

After some research I discovered the ideal molding material. It’s a two-part silicone called Knead-a-Mold. (There are other brands as well.) You take equal parts and mix the putty-like substance together with your fingers–it’s completely non-toxic and can even be used for food molds–until the colours are blended completely, then push it against and around the object you want to duplicate. I did this with the silver pin, let it set, then cast plaster around that to give the mold support, then took all the components apart. I mixed up the cement and packed it into the empty silicone mold backed by the plaster. I had previously made pin back assemblies which I embedded into the cement before it set.The concrete pins are identical in every wayto the original silver one, except in the material itself. Every detail of the metal’s fused texture is visible. These two-part non-toxic silicones have amazing potential. I mounted the pins onto a matte white acrylic sheet so they could be placed on a wall when not being worn.

To learn more about Andrew and his work visit his websites:
www.artconcrete.blogspot.com
www.makersgallery.com/concrete

Making a two-part mold with Brush-a-Mold.

This past February, students from around the country attended our mold-making and casting workshop.  Students learned how to make one part, two-part, and  mother-molds with our silicone mold-making materials.  In addition, students learned how to cast with our urethane resins and create variety of simple finishes with dyes, metal coatings, and  powders.

A student applies Swell-Shell mothermold on a small sculpture to create a detailed mold for casting.

After applying Brush-a-Mold silicone mold making material on a plaster bust, Swell-Shell mothermold material is applied.

What an awesome group of students! They learned a lot in two days.

Special thanks to Association for Visual Arts and Chattanooga State Technical Community College for co-producing this great workshop!

If you are interested in attending future workshops, please be sure to email us [Email address: info #AT# townsendatelier.com - replace #AT# with @ ] and we will place you on our mailing list.