Making Molds for Duplicating Your Favorite Polymer Clay Beads
Time Saving Techniques for Jewelry Bead Making Projects:
The quickest way to make multiple copies of your favorite buttons, beads or charms, is to use a simple mold that can be filled with polymer clay to create copies of the original. That's exactly what I did with the molded heart bead in today's photo.
The other side of this heart bead is shown in another post where I also explained how to make a mold using scrap polymer clay. Here's the link: Heart Beads For Valentines Jewelry Made Using a Polymer Clay Mold
Besides using scrap polymer clay to make your molds, there are several other mold-making materials you can use as well:
- Sculpey Super Elasticlay Mold Maker: Sold in a 1/2 pound box, this somewhat flexible polymer clay makes for easy removal of molded clay projects. And because it is very soft, detailed patterns replicate or transfer nicely. By the way, small amounts of this clay can also be used as a conditioner for very hard clays.
- Sculpey SuperFlex or Bake and Bend Clay: This polymer clay based material is more rubbery and greasy than regular polymer clay, but it makes nice flexible molds and texture sheets.
- Silicone Molding Putty: A "2 part" mixture type of product that I have not yet tried…. but have heard good things about. Miracle Mold and Alley Goop are a couple of other brands which do the same thing. Basically you mix some of putty A and some of putty B together, and then using a release agent (such as oil or whatever they recommend), you push your object into the mixture and let set. Many of these silicone molds can withstand heat, and can therefore be put into the oven with your polymer clay (works with liquid clays too). The silicone mold materials are more expensive than the polymer clay based ones, but they are supposed to be more durable and versatile.
- Hot Glue: Now this technique is really cheap, and kind fun… although it won't reproduce fine details very well. All you do is melt a puddle of hot glue onto a nonstick sheet; Spray some Pam cooking oil onto the piece you want to mold; And then stick it in the glue before the glue hardens. I used to use this hot glue trick to create texture patterns for making paper and it worked quite well in a pinch.
There are several other ways to make polymer clay bead making molds…. but they'll have to wait for another day.
Filed Under: 03: Supplies, 05: Techniques by Comment. 
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Comments on Making Molds for Duplicating Your Favorite Polymer Clay Beads
5:00 am
Last Sunday the local PC group had our monthly meeting and guess what we did…made molds of buttons and earrings…LOL. It is so funny how many of your blogs are just what I have been experimenting or thinking about. Maybe we knew each other in a different life or were twins separated at birth…no don't think so because i am a couple years older. If you are into the TV show LOST, it may be a time travel thing.
Our PC group used a silicone molding putty. It was very easy to use, set up quickly and results were great. The molds were soft and flexible but I don't know if I would venture into putting them in the oven; will check with the woman who brought the molding compound. One thing we discovered was that a textured heart earring mold some pretty cool flower petals.
7:12 am
Cindy, I will vouch for Alley Goop. Have used it a few times and have been happy with the results. I made a really cool leaf mold off my decorated mirror, for example. Also used it to make molds to measure out consistent size beads. Only thing I've found is that it seems to take longer than the 15 minutes that the directions say it needs to harden. I wait about 1 hour to release the molded item, most of the time never needing a release agent.
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5:51 pm
@Anna: Neat! Isn't that weird when that happens! It happens to me all the time. I go to write about a topic and some other clayer writes about it the same day. Then I have to delay it for awhile so it doesn't look like I copied or am a follower of some sort! LOL Geez.. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone sometimes. (Sorry Survivor's on when Lost is, so I haven't gotten into it, so I have no idea what you're talking about. :-) Do look into the silicone molds in the oven and let us know. I have heard they work though haven't tried it yet myself. (Too many things to try, not enough money or time to try them all.)
@Maria: Thanks for the info on the Alley Goop! Sounds real cool! Also, good to know about the set time. Wouldn't want to wreck the mold being impatient!
7:42 pm
Is it possible to do a 2 part mold for PC? If it is, how does one make them? I used to do ceramics so I understand some of the points on using multi part molds.
5:28 pm
Yes you can Ken. Make a mold of each side. Then mold one side and bake it. Fill the other mold with clay and push your baked piece onto the raw clay in the mold. Un-mold it and bake again.
If you read the post linked by my name, I think it explains it better.
8:29 am
For mold supplies at very reasonable prices, plus miniature and smaller tools and lots of power, check out micromark.com. I want one of everything!
9:16 am
Hi Cindy, I have a great deal of Sculpey clay and wonder if I can make molds with it to duplicate old pieces of jewellery. I have some Silicone, but i think if Sculpey will work it will be a little cheaper. Can you advise me please and if okay the baking time please. The clay is a little hard so how much oil would I need to soften the clay enough please?
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10:12 am
@ Carole
Hope you don't mind me jumping in and sharing some thoughts.
You might be able to make molds using the Sculpey…but since the clay doesn't bend or ease once you bake the mold, you may end up with distorted clay when you try to remove your design from the mold.
Try it! I'd use something with a deep pattern and depth, so that you can use a toothpick or similar implement to pull it out from the back. Also remember to use a little cornstarch first, to help ease out the clay.
Most of the best molding material contains some type of silicone, so that you can bend the mold gently to pop out the embedded object with no distortion.
The best place I have found to purchase silicone mold materials is micromark.com. They have several pages of materials, and if you choose, they will send you a catalog. Plus they carry tons of other neat stuff cross applicable to polymer clay.
If you go up to the top left of the page and type "molds" in the search facility here at this site, a whole bunch of articles/comments previously covered on this site pop up to look through.
Also just went to google.com, and searched on "mold making for polymer clay" and tons of articles of instructions and tuts came up.
Interested to hear how it goes. Once you try a regular Sculpty clay mold, definitely come back to this thread and let us know how it turned out.
Wish you the best of luck, hope this helps!
11:18 am
How kind of you to reply Jocelyn! I think i may stick to the silicone it might be easier. However, I just attempted to make a mold with silicone, but I think the combination of my hot hands, together with the hot weather made it a disaster. I have now put Silicone in the fridge. To add to the disaster, I didn't have any corn starch or talcum powder to help release the item, need I say more???????
i must find out our equivilent over here in the Uk to your corn starch1
hugs,
Carole
11:56 am
Yes, thank you Jocelyn! You did an excellent job answering Carole's question!
Carole I think the UK equivalent to cornstarch is cornflour. The stuff you use to thicken pie filling, puddings, Chinese Food sauces, etc. Rice flour should work too.
12:03 pm
Thank you Cindy but none in my larder, I will go shopping tomorrow and will let you both know the results.
xx