Easy Copies in Plaster! And Bunny Nests!

Tuesday Tutorial - Easy Plaster Casting

These three bunnies were all made by the easiest method of plaster casting that I have found.

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1. Knead a hunk of sculpy that is about three times the mass of the item you want to cast.  When it is pliable and soft roll it out with a rolling pin.  Making sure that it is thick enough for your entire item to be pressed into it and still have some material under it.

2. Spray the item you are copying with pan spray, coat the sculpy with it as well.  Press the item into the sculpy.  I rolled the rolling pin over mine because it has a flat back.

3. Remove the original item and spray the inside of the 'mold' again.

4. Mix up just enough Plaster of Paris to fill the mold to the top.  I mix mine to the consistency of pudding, as shown in the bowl.

5. Fill the mold by spooning in the plaster.  Smooth it as well as you can.  Wipe out extra plaster with paper towels and discard, you don't want to wash this stuff down your drain.

6. When you item is almost dry, these bunnies took about 3 hours each, gently remove the flexible sculpty mold from the casting.  You can easily trim off extra bits at this point with a butter knife or even your fingernails.  When it is completely dry, I used the finest grater on my box grater to smooth the bottoms so the bunnies could stand.  I also smoothed out the back of each bunny.

I used the bunnies is these small spring vignettes that I am listing on etsy.  As you can see I used small pastry mold and wood thread spools.  I painted them and hot glued the bunnies to the bottom of the shell, which I filled with florist's moss and then embellished them with glitter, rick-rack, old ribbons, eggs, a bird, folded fan rosettes, and each of the bunnies holds a spring theme picture which I found on Graphics Fairy.

This picture shows one of them in more detail.  Good luck and have fun with this casting method.