Silicon Adhesives are EXPENSIVE, but nothing else works.

Silicon is a great surface and a super mold making material. The versatility of this product comes from the characteristic that it does not want to stick to anything. I love a great silicon mold because it also goes the other way in that most things don't stick to the silicon once it is made into a mold. One use for silicon has been pad printing, which is using a molded silicon shape to pick up ink and then with pressure the silicon will release the ink onto an object that does not have to be a flat smooth surface. I have been experimenting with making silicon based stickers and stamps, but the problem has been getting something to stick to the back of the silicon so that I can then stick the silicon sticker or stamp onto something else. Yesterday I purchased some silicon adhesive from Douglas and Sturgess in Richmond California, a well-know purveyor of all things moldy, and was surprised by the cost. A small tube of silicon adhesive was $11 and I mean a small tube. It had some reference to the active ingredient and I used the entire tube at once, but this stuff is expensive. I applied the adhesive to a vinyl sticker sheet, like bumper sticker paper, and let it dry overnight. The good news is that it seems to work, although I am not 100% convinced that the adhesive will permanently bond to the vinyl, I am going with the initial testing that shows a decent bond. Now I have been applying these small stamps with the sticky back on the back of phones and am using them as stamps. I call them Phone Emblems and will be launching a site dedicated to these products as they develop. The silicon has a high tech feeling and the detail is great, plus the silicon also works like a grip on a surface when you set the phone down. This could be considered and add-on for cell phones and for cases, as well as, a fun thing to have on a mobile phone which is just the right size for the backing of a stamp. I have had some mistakes in the past where I could not get the silicon off of a project piece and I am going to go back to that to test alternative methods of sticking something to silicon. I think that an adhesive sticker with more porosity will allow the silicon to dig in and set inside the paper itself which should work as a way to make the silicon bond without using the expensive glue. Also I have had some trouble separating urethane rubber from silicon and could see putting a back coat of urethane then connecting to the urethane may be an easier and cheaper process. One of the fun things about experimenting is when the mistakes of the past solve problems in the future. This makes even my seemingly wasted efforts worthwhile, if I can remember what the actual mistake was and why it happened. Better notes next time.

Adhesives and Sticky Stuff

Now that I have enough items that I am happy with I need to find things to put them on. Everything I made needs to be mounted or adhered to some other product to make it seem useful since the photo fresco items that I make don't have a purpose on their own. I have been working on putting the emblems on mesh trucker hats and that's worked out pretty well using E6000 glue and applying pressure to the item on the hat for 6-12 hours. Epoxy has also worked and the final effect is a sort of inset style with the emblem appearing to be pushed down into the hat itself which makes it look more official. Pictures to come. I am also testing the different glues that I have been using to stick these emblems on other things like phones, wine bottles and coffee cups. In some cases I see these emblems being used as car or skateboard stickers, but they have to be able to weather the elements. I don't think there is a problem with the weathering effects as that should only add to the character of each of the emblems, but the life of the product will only be as good as the adhesive that is used to put the items on a car or skateboard. I have been putting an adhesive backed vinyl sticker onto the epoxy pieces, which is the same quality of sticker that is used for a bumper sticker. I have also been painting on a pressure sensitive adhesive with a layer of adhesive backed paper that can be removed prior to the adhesion of the emblem to a surface. My epoxy emblems can bend with the addition of heat from the sun, hand or a blow dryer, so that makes it able to bend around a curved surface like a trunk lid of a car or a bottle. In the case of the coffee cup I filled the cup with hot water and applied tape around the cup to hold the emblems in place while it cools. Hopefully the curvature of the heated emblem will remain as it cools and then the adhesives can do their job of holding the molded shape to the cup. This type of emblem is not microwave safe since it has metal in the emblem, but I can make a batch of colored emblems or spray painted emblems to fix that problem if the adhesives work. My current experiment with these emblem stickers is on a wine bottle with the two types of pressure sensitive adhesives. I let the bottle sit outside for a couple of days and now I have submerged it in soapy water and am letting it sit for an hour to see if the emblems pop off. I've put a decent amount of scrubbing to the bottle and the paper stickers are slowly dissolving. Any emblem will eventually come off with enough abuse, but for normal wear and tear for an inexpensive easy to apply item, this should be a sufficient test. I suppose I should also freeze the bottle and then bury it for a few days just to give it a true measure of abuse. The final test can be to hand it to my kids, they can break anything.

The Mayan Calendar before the Mayan Calendar

I have been working on my casting techniques using the methods I loosely call "photo fresco" and have been converting my 2-d images into 3-d products. The process has been challenging, but in the back of my head I can't help but imagine the bigger picture problem that we face with the End of the World in December of 2012. As the ancient Mayan Calendar comes to an end the World is set to implode or explode. The face in the middle of the Old Mayan calendar is a Sun God of some sort and I am not an expert on ancient Gods, but this one is one of the best God's Ever and he is totally with the times. The relationship that I am finding with the actual face of the Mayan God inside the calendar and pictures of people online is similar in that everyone is sticking out their tongue these days when they take a photo. If you look at the Mayan God you will quickly realize that this isn't your typical stoic serious type of God, but a mocking laughing type of God who has just told a good joke, like the World is Going to End, ha, ha, ha. Following the good joke he sticks out his tongue. The Mayans didn't have cameras, as far as we know, so this face must've been a symbolic gesture that was significant enough to have it in the center of the calendar. Now, thousands of years later, every 15 year old boy or girl sticks out their tongue when they are having their photo taken. I'll post some photos to compare them, but it seems obvious that this God new what he was talking about. This analysis has been creeping into my psyche as I keep making these heads, like coins, whenever I have left over epoxy from my other pendants that I am making. I have made some magnets and pendants with these pieces and I need to finish them off so that I can get more of them in the store. Also I am applying some sticky back stuff to make them into stickers so that I can pass them out in the store in Los Angeles. Next I have to create a new version for the next Mayan calendar, but maybe it should have the picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue in the middle of the calendar.

Finally, products for everyone

I have reduced the size of my work into smaller, high definition pieces that can be incorporated into clothing, accessories and jewelry. As I have made these pieces smaller I have been getting higher and higher detail, to the point that my ability to capture photographic detail is now 5 to 10 times higher than what I can actually use or need. The higher resolution does come through as sharper lines in the final pieces, so I don't think it is wasted. I'll post some images of the final pieces soon.

Analog vs. Digital

The topic of this report is rust. Today I realized that I can spend my afternoons watching rust and if it happens quick enough I will be entertained. Rust can be used in the same way that silver can be used in photography, only the process that I have been experimenting with reverses that effect. I have been making reliefs with a combination of screen printing processes and casting, then when I make a cast from the mold I have been using metals like steel, brass, copper and aluminum as a pigment in the pieces that I make. I have chosen photographic images of celebrity mugshots, like Johnny Cash and have made the skin tones and white areas the raised part of the design. Once the image is cast I can sand down and coat the surface with acidic liquids and accelerate a rust effect which lightens the steel. Basically this is a steel version of the photographic process which we typically associate with a silver chemical procedure.

3-D versus 2-D, Whatever!

Why are 3-dimensional products more interesting than 2-dimensional images? Simply put they have more dimensions. I have worked with flat images for so long that I am drawn to the objects that I can make as 3-dimensional products in a way that infatuates me. The fact that the 3-dimensional products are made from 2-dimensional images only enhances the character of the products themselves because it is as if I am using the same underlying graphic technology to make the 3-d objects. This transition is what keeps pulling me back in and creates the inertia that keeps me moving forward on these projects. My brain has been twisted inside out as I keep making modifications to the process of developing a wide range of products and each product has some x-factor that relates to the earlier steps. Today I tried to reduce the concepts to a catalog sheet or drawing of the things that I can make using these photo-fresco techniques and they are legion. I don't even consider the final products photo-fresco in the original context of the phrase, but because the methods of the photo-fresco processes brought me to this point I am keeping with the original catch phrase, photo fresco.

The Product is the Mold

I have been trying different mold making techniques and a variety of mold making materials including plaster, silicone and urethane. The Silicone is usually my favorite because of it's ability to capture detail and resistance to sticking from other materials poured into it like polyester resin and epoxy. My urethane molds seem more sensitive to sticking, but I was surprised to find that my urethane mold may capture as much or more detail than the silicone that I recently used. I purchased a small amount of silicon rubber last week in an attempt to make a few small molds for the cold cast pendants that I have been making. I poured the 2 part mixture and everything looked fine, but each piece had a small air bubble in the set rubber and this carried over into the casting of the final pieces. This was a result of the thickness that the silicon rubber was and it was a fast setting batch of Silicone, Smooth-On, is the brand. There isn't really anything I can do about the bubbles and it is quite annoying since Silcone is expensive to begin with. As I pondered my new problem I did a second cast of the same items and although it was better, I still have a few problems. The viscosity of the silicon isn't perfect for everything, so I will need to find a new product for getting into cracks and crevices. When I poured the silicon I stared for 30 minutes watching each air bubble come up to the surface and helped pop them thinking that must be the last one. My next attempt was to use some urethane rubber that I happened to have as a backup and make a mold from a first generation print so that I would be getting the best casting possible from a new item. It appears that because the urethane was a thinner mixture that the bubbles release more easily and the 2 to 1 mixture flowed more evenly over the items and filled the cracks and crevices much quicker. The urethane rubber leaves a oily feeling when it pops out from the original, but that should only help with making a casting. I quickly sprayed down the new mold an poured a mixture of polyester resin gel coat with an epoxy back fill to make a relatively thin relief that I can cut and use as an applique. I have not pulled this item from the mold yet, but I am looking forward to getting it this morning. The composite between polyester resin and epoxy is also a solution that appears as a result of two problems. One, I ran out of polyester resin. Two, the polyester resin penetrates the crevices and fills the voids made in these small molds easier than the epoxy does. The epoxy suffers from the same problem that the silicon does, even though both of these casting products have strong benefits once they are used. I know that having a vacuum pump system to draw the air bubbles out of the setting materials would improve my final results, but I would like to avoid going that far in making the process more complex. I enjoy mixing and pouring the chemicals, but having to set up a vacuum system is just another bunch of things to deal with. I can use my originals as molds themselves, which isn't a bad idea as the best results in my final products that I have gotten have come from casting in the original. I have been mixing in some flexible polyester resin into my regular resin and the end result is a less fragile piece that has some of the characteristics of the epoxy castings. This helps with the removal of the casting from the original, but in the end the original gets destroyed and then I have to make a new original which involved additional work. My last batch of castings made it through 5 - 10 sets of castings before the detail started breaking away from the original and lodging into the cast pieces. This is something that can be expanded on because it had an interesting look, but from a simple casting perspective the 5-10 uses is not quite enough to justify the work in making the original mold. My problem with the mold may have come from switching from my polyester resin mixtures to epoxy after 4-5 castings. I usually have better results with materials releasing with the epoxy so I didn't fret about as much mold release as normal, but either the epoxy gripped the mold detail in a different way than the polyester resin does, or the use of polyester resin in the mold made the epoxy bond stronger to the original. Assuming the later is the case and that there must have been a latent residue of polyester resin in the mold from prior use, then I can assume that the bond between the epoxy and the polyester resin is superb. This takes me back to the use of polyester resin as the gel coat material for strength and detail with the epoxy backing for durability and some flexibility, as well as, superior versatility in bonding with other materials like wood or cement later on.