How to Make Your Own Message Molds

Step 1:

Preheat oven to 275 °F. Test temperature with oven thermometer for perfectly cured clay. Condition all clay by kneading until it’s soft and smooth or running it through the Clay Conditioning Machine for several passes on the widest setting. Fold the clay in half after each pass and insert the fold side into the rollers first.

Step 2:

Condition and roll out a sheet of any color clay you want. No specific color is needed, but black will work best.

Step 3:

Place the whole sheet onto the glass, you don’t need a real large sheet if you are doing fairly short sentences and words to begin with) 2 ½” square should be plenty, don’t flatten the sheet or press on it very hard, your finger pressure will put valleys in the surface of the clay.

Step 4:

Place the individual letters in a row on the surface of the clay. You can also use tweezers to do this. If you need to move the letters a little as you go you can shift them into place with your toothpick, be careful not to leave marks in the surface of the clay. Don’t press them in yet. (The words on the lower left in turquoise are already made and baked.)

Step 5:

Place the letters and space them evenly.

Step 6:

Using the back of the stamp, place it on the letters and press gently but evenly to push the letters into the clay just a little bit. Do not press farther than half way in. If you do, start again with a fresh sheet of clay.

Step 7:

Remove the stamp and make another word, continue forming words and pressing them in. Or you can place all your words in the size of the foam backed stamp and press them in all at once.

Step 8:

With your Super Slicer cut the words into little squares or rectangles of words, do not remove from the glass or separate. If it is a sentence, place the letters in a row and cut into a long rectangle.

Step 9:

Cut away the excess clay around your words. Bake the words and the glass in the oven at 275 °F for 20 minutes. Shut off the oven and let the glass cool before removing from the oven and going to the next step. Leave your words and clay attached to the glass.

Step 10:

Condition the two-part silicone molding compound. The instructions come with the product. Use about ¾” balls of each compound.

Step 11:

Flatten the molding compound into a little pancake, so that when you place it over both your words it is ¼” bigger than the words all the way around and about a ¼” in thickness.

Step 12:

Place over the words and gently compact the molding compound to the words with your palm and then go around the outside of the molding compound and push gently towards the little blocks of words with your forefinger. Once you have made a couple of these you will find the optimum thickness for you and your work. If you happen to press through, move more of the molding compound over the area. You should work fast; you have only a few minutes before it will start to set up.

Step 13:

Let the mold set up.

Step 14:

15-20 minutes should do it, you can check by using your finger nail and placing it into the out side edge of the mold, if it makes and indentation it is not done. When the molding compound is set up it will dent with your nail but bounce back quickly when you take your nail away.

Step 15:

When the mold sets up you can take the mold away by slipping your clay blade under a small edge of the mold, when you can pull it back, pull it off with your fingers so as not to cut into the mold with the blade.

Step 16:

Bend the mold back slightly to release a corner of a word block. Take out the words; sometimes the letters will stick if this happens remove them with a toothpick. As always, the more you do something the more comfortable it becomes, practice with simple words and small amounts of molding compound to start.

Step 17:

Roll out a little coil of clay that is as long as your section to be molded and about ¼” in diameter. Press into the mold, start at one end of the word and press the clay in moving and pressing to the other end.

Step 18:

Slice off the excess with your Super Slicer. Gently saw across the back of the mold. Go slow and short strokes so you don’t cut into the surface of the mold. You may need to reduce the amount of clay so you have no excess to trim away.

Step 19:

Bend the mold back slightly from the clay and grab the edge of the little banner, gently and remove from the mold.

Step 20:

Hold each end of the banner and gently bend to curve it.

Step 21:

A good way to highlight the letters is to dust a small amount of Pearl-Ex powder gently over the raised surface of the letters.

Step 22:

Roll out a conditioned sheet of clay on the 2nd to thickest setting. Cut a strip of clay that is the height of the mold and 1” longer than each end of the mold.

Step 23:

Cut a strip of clay that is the height of the mold and 1” longer than each end of the mold. Press into the mold with the end of the BIC pen. Go from one end of the mold to the other.

Step 24:

If the pen end sticks to the clay and won’t come free without pulling the banner out. Twist with a rising motion to loosen. Once you have gone across the molded area like this gently remove the banner from the mold.

Step 25:

Bend the little banner back at both ends where the end of the mold shows on the clay and then bend forward again at a slightly different angle.

Step 26:

Once you have the shape you like to your banner you can cut a “v” shapes into the end with your Clay Knife. You can highlight the letters by brushing on the surface of a stamp pad. You can bake these just the way they are and use them to embellish scrapbooks, cards, on clay covered bottles like in the picture above, or on anything else you can think of.

Step 27:

Place the letters on your sheet of clay as above.

Step 28:

Put the words closer together.

Step 29:

With a Clay Knife cut out a thought bubble or speak bubble around the words.

Step 30:

Bake, cool, and mold as above.