Glue and Colour in Silicone

When we shared our top 5 tips to work with silicone, we actually had 7 instead of 5 points. But it was too much to talk about in a post, so today, we’re going to share the 2 things kids care about most when making things - glue and colour.

Colour

There are probably other ways to colour silicone, but this was how Emma and I did ours. We mix paint to silicone in a 1:3 ratio. They will get pastel-ly but they all get coloured, while still keeping its silicone properties. The more paint you add, the stickier and less bouncy it gets. And it will get to a point where it’s too tacky and gunky to be removed from the baking paper.

We used our fingers to mix when making the samples, but I tried using a palette knife after that, and it worked out so much better. It was less messy, and there is a lot less wasted material because the palette knife will scrape up everything.

Glue

Silicone sticks to silicone, but not so much with any other plastics or metal. It’s not like they’ll slide off, but it generally won’t hold together as well. But because silicone sticks to silicone, you could sandwich materials that don’t stick in between layers of silicone stuck together by even more silicone!

This is how these earrings were made.

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A few words from Emma:

My name is Emma Morris and I am a jewellery design student based in Glasgow. My love for making things started me along my path to becoming a jewellery designer. In my spare time, I like to bring my ideas to life to share with people. I inject colour and fun into my work, and am constantly coming up with new designs!

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FINAL COLLECTION - A Material Collaboration with Emma Morris: Silicone

Emma and I recently completed a material collaboration on silicone that you can read about here: an introduction. We also talked about our top 5 tips to effectively work with silicone. Here are the results of our little adventure.

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A few words from Emma:

My name is Emma Morris and I am a jewellery design student based in Glasgow. My love for making things started me along my path to becoming a jewellery designer. In my spare time, I like to bring my ideas to life to share with people. I inject colour and fun into my work, and am constantly coming up with new designs!

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Top 5 Tips to Effectively work with Silicone

Coming off the recent collaboration with Emma, we decided to share out top 5 tips for working with silicone. After reading this, you can probably go out and start making your own silicone jewellery for under $5!

1. Cleaning
Clean out nozzles / utensils after the silicone is dry. You avoid a lot of mess by doing this!

2. Gloves
We’re split about this one. Emma says to use them. I think it’s safer to use them, but I was less messy and clumsy without them. And less mess meant I got less of it on my hands than when I actually wore the gloves. But stay safe and keep them on.

3. Use what you have!
Baking paper is a great base to work on. Silicone doesn’t stick to it, and it’s translucent so you can print out templates and place them under the baking paper to use as guidelines. Shower silicone also works just as well as other kinds of silicone. To shape the silicone, we used piping tools that we got on sale. They’re just the usual stuff you’d use to pipe icing and cream on cakes.

4. Work in a well-ventilated area
The fumes can, and will get to you. If you stay in a room that doesn’t allow much wind to get in, work in the kitchen, with the vents switched on. You know, the thing that makes a lot of noise absorbing the smoke that’s produced when you cook.

5. Protect them from dust
Silicone and dust seem to really like each other so keep them in a box once they’re done, even if you’re planning to work on them in a few hours. If you’re in an area with a lot of wind, cover the drying pieces with a propped up piece of paper, or some light fabric. If you do see some dust on the cured silicone, just take some cello tape and use it like a lint roller (:

Here's some inspiration, if you're in need of any!

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A few words from Emma:

My name is Emma Morris and I am a jewellery design student based in Glasgow. My love for making things started me along my path to becoming a jewellery designer. In my spare time, I like to bring my ideas to life to share with people. I inject colour and fun into my work, and am constantly coming up with new designs!

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A Material Collaboration with Emma Morris: Silicone

Emma and I are desk buddies in the workshop. She makes amazing things, and we thrive off each other’s ideas and feedback and work. Just before summer break started, we decided to do a mini collaboration.

We would come together and make some samples, and then go off to make a collection of 10 wearable pieces using the material. In this case, we chose silicone. God knows what we were thinking when we agreed on silicone but it’s been a really interesting experience to say the least.

We can make more than 10 items, but we have to narrow it down to 10 for the purpose of being concise. We won’t discuss which samples we’re working off, or what ideas we’re brewing or if there’s another material we’re adding to it. The deadline for this is mid-August 2017. But we’ll probably only share our results the next month.

For now, to give you an idea of what we’re working off, here are the samples we made.

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A few words from Emma:

My name is Emma Morris and I am a jewellery design student based in Glasgow. My love for making things started me along my path to becoming a jewellery designer. In my spare time, I like to bring my ideas to life to share with people. I inject colour and fun into my work, and am constantly coming up with new designs!

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