Post #691240 by Tipsy Yeti on Sat, Aug 24, 2013 10:39 AM

Hi all, I'm starting my first Tiki mug, and I'll be posting my progress here. I've been a sculptor for years, bit I've never tried to cast ceramic slip. Most of my sculptures are either latex masks, silicone busts or resin model kits, so ceramic slip is a new one...

My first step was the mug sculpture, I have about 100 designs drawn up but what to start with, I decided to go with a Harryhausen inspired Cyclops design being fairly simple.

Next thing was to make a mold, now I've made probably 1000 molds in my life, but they usually need to be as thin as possible for weight reasons. This one needed to be a good thick boxy one. So I did some research and found some resources online, and started.
The first step was to figure out how many pieces the mold needed to be, in this case 4 seems to be the right number. Part one was the face,

He looks a little nervous about what's about to happen....

Once that piece was molded and cleaned up, I started to block out part 2 of the mold.

Part 3 came next and then the plug for the bottom to finish it up.

Now it's just a waiting game to let the mold dry for a few days. I have my slip ready to go and I'm really having a hard time waiting. While making this mold I decided that a more durable master sculpture might be a good idea for the next mug that I make. I have the second mug sculpted, a little shrunken head...

So I decided that moving forward I would make a silicone master copy of my sculpture and use that to make the molds, then I could make as many molds of the same mug as I need.

I started to do this as a fun way to make myself a mug or two, but if it turns out I may sell a few of these mugs if people are interested. I need to finish one first, so I'll try not to get ahead of myself here. All I know is I'm really having fun making these.

Thanks for looking, I'd love to hear what you all think...