A card template purchased from any craft shop will provide you with a range of heart shapes from which your students can produce personal sets of jewellery. The pack usually contains two cards with 8 shapes on each. The positive press out shapes can also be used for templates to produce new moulds.
Select the negative heart shapes and place them individually or as a group on to a square of 50mm x 50mm MDF or similar material ensuring that each shape has a suitable sprue hole in line with the edge of the square. (The sprue is effectively a funnel to allow the liquid metal to run into the mould).
Using a second piece of MDF of the same size, sandwich the card between the two pieces and place in the LT1 mould holder.
Moulds can be re-used as can be been seen in the picture above. This mould was used 4 times and could still be used again. The pouring of metal was at high heat. More use could be made of a single mould at low heat but care should be taken that the liquid metal does not start to solidify.
After pouring ensure that you allow the metal to cool before extracting from the LT1 and again before removing from the mould. Do not allow pupils to hold the piece until the metal has cooled. Do not force cooling as this will cause the metal to dull as in a dry joint.
After the casts have cooled they can be removed from the moulds and the sprue metal cut off using snips.
Each piece can then be filed and polished to produce a professional finish.
Extra shine can be achieved by cleaning on a carborundum stone and then polished on a buffing machine taking great care with smaller items.
A compendium of heart shaped jewellery comprising of earrings, brooches, a bracelet and necklace.
The addition of adhesive stones from Papermania and containing a selection of 64 self adhesive stones further enhances the jewellery.
