The Journey Within: : Experimenting with resin, plaster and concrete casting

In this video I demonstrate how to combine different setting materials into the one artwork. For this project I have used a milk carton as a mould, because I’m teaching this to a class of 27 x Year 5 students and I needed something cheap and readily available. Using a carton also enabled me to add a line detail in hot glue to the walls of the sculpture. However, I learnt the hard way, that resin sticks fast to milk cartons. So I needed to brush wax release agent on the sides of the carton first. The carton also seems to give the surface of the resin a slightly cloudy effect, which is why I added the glass coat at the end.
Each layer needs at least 24 hours to set and cure, so this is a project that must be completed over several lessons. Below is the list of materials I used. I recommend doing some testing first, as these materials can vary from brand to brand, and may behave differently from the ones featured in the video.
Materials required:
1Lt Cardboard drink carton
Hot glue gun & sticks
Bulldog Clips
Wax Mould Release
Casting resin (do not pour the resin too thick - or do it in layers if required)
Something to embed in the resin (I used artificial leaves)
Casting plaster
Grey concrete
Sticks
Sandpaper
Liquid Gloss varnish (or use a small amount of the casting resin)