Moldable Plastic - who knew.....

I was sent this really intriguing product to review. As regular visitors will know, I have been having fun with air dried clay and moulds lately, so I was interested to see how this would compare

Firstly, it's easy and rather a lot of fun to use, you just drop some of the little white pellets into a bowl of very hot water, leave it for a couple of minutes....

The plastic granules turn clear and merge together....

Lift the pliable lump of molten plastic out of the water with a spoon or tongs, and start tearing bits off to put into the rubber moulds (which I forgot to photograph). The plastic sets very quickly and turns an opaque milky white, it takes seconds to dry. If the ball of plastic starts to set, just plunge it back into the hot water to make it pliable again...

I wanted to see what colouring mediums would work, for these butterfly key rings I used ProMarkers, and coated them with Stickles glitter glue...

 Then I moulded some of my favourite little garden pots using moulds by KatySue Designs, and coloured these with some acrylic paints, glimmer sprays, gilding wax. You will see the edges of a couple of the pots on the top look a bit bashed around - that was my fault for not pressing the material fully into the moulds, but I didn't recast them because I quite the way they look like chipped stone.....

I had to turn one of them into a card, using Martha Stewart punches for the leaves and flowers...

So after playing around with it, I can give a very positive review for the following reasons:

The material is easy to mould, and is incredibly lightweight, always a plus in these days of expensive postal charges. Each of the little pots doesn't weigh any more than an acrylic button - much lighter than the same pots done in air dry clay

It's very durable, the clay can break quite easily, if you drop them on the floor for instance, they don't survive, but this material doesn't break or chip which must be a good thing if you are sending projects by Royal Mail!

The whole process took a lot less time than with the clay, which of course has to dry slowly. You can have your embellishments in seconds with this material

I liked the way the pots looked when painted with acrylic paints, shimmer mists and gilding wax. All these paints adhered well to the surface, and I was able to add shading and highlights. I wasn't so keen on the look I got with the ProMarkers. 

 I reckon one pot would last a long long time, a little goes a very long way,  Another plus is that any unused material Is just popped back into the container to be re-melted the next time.

Great product for crafting your own embellishments when  moulds and texture plates etc are all the rage at the moment - check out Katy Sue Designs, they mail worldwide, and in the USA, Michaels has a great range of rubber moulds by Martha Stewart

I have a few more ideas - I plan to colour the actual water that the plastic is melted in to see if it absorbs the colour as the granules melt - I feel like a mad scientist trying out all these ideas. I also fancy rolling out a square with a rolling pin onto a craft mat and trying to emboss it, or pressing a stamp into it to take the impression....I'll let you know when I get on with these ideas. It would make great pendants, I wonder if I could use alcohol inks when the plastic was still warm...........playtime!

Read all about it HERE

and buy it HERE Amazon

Hope you've enjoyed reading this review, there's always something new for us crafters to play with! See you tomorrow x