Friendly plastic play

I've been playing with Friendly Plastic in readiness for a swap. I like using FP with silicone moulds as the resulting embellishments are very lightweight and survive the worlds postal systems incredibly well (unlike heavy embossing powder embellishments, which are often shattered by the experience!). You can also make the FP very thin, and sometimes 'partial' moulds are more interesting than complete ones.

I have a bowl of cold water by my side, lay the Friendly Plastic into my mould (foil side down) and heat it with my heat gun until it gets shiny and slumps into the mould. I dip my fingers into the cold water, then use them to push the FP into the mould, making sure it's pushed into all the nooks and crannies. Fingers don't burn if there is water between them and the Friendly Plastic, but they do burn if there isn't - so be careful!

When I have finished pushing the FP into the corners, I drop the mould and FP into the cold water and leave it there for as long as I can bear to. If it has any flat shiny bits when I unmould it, it means that particular bit of FP didn't get hot enough to melt into the mould properly, so I just repeat the process, focussing on that area of the piece.

I find the Friendly Plastic colours a little bright, so always tone down or add other colour by rubbing gently with Treasure Gold wax. Here are a selection of pieces, some made using scraps, some using just one piece of FP. Remember that you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it.


As you can see from the mermaid, you can use more than one colour in the mould - she was made using scraps of turquoise and gold. The green man at the front of the picture was made using lots of small scraps of various colours, the Treasure gold brings them all together into one piece.

I use Krafty Lady moulds, Enchanted Gallery moulds, and some I've made myself using 2 part silicone mould compound, which you can buy very reasonably at Polymer Clay Expess. I am looking at experimenting with different methods of working with Friendly Plastic, and trying to create some lovely things without ending up with a sticky grey mess (which is what many of my efforts were like before I discovered using it in moulds!).