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you'll need. Begin slowly sifting in the plaster until it stands just above the surface of the water. You'll notice the plaster becomes saturated and then appears to crack on the surface. It's ready for mixing. You can simply mix (whip) with a spoon for about 3 minutes and then begin to spoon it onto the rubber mold. As it begins to set up, you can form it like icing on a cake, into a box like form, slightly wider both ways, than your mold. I'd say a width of about 1/2" wider all the way around, is sufficient. Before it's had time to become rigid, smooth the top of your mound to make it a flat surface, as this will be the bottom of your mold unit, when it comes time to pour materials into the mold for reproduction.

When the plaster is set up, twist the whole unit off the working board, turn it over and let it finish setting up until the plaster has completely cooled down.

With a sponge, wash back any plaster that has seeped around the edge of your rubber mold, preventing it from just dropping out. Grab the edges of your rubber mold with finger tips and gently pull the rubber mold out of the mother mold.

Once that is done, remove the rubber mold from your model. Now you can sponge down your mother mold and wash the rubber mold. Replace the rubber mold back into its mother mold for safe keeping.

When your ready to pour something like plaster into your mold, rinse your mold in soapy water and just shake off the excess. Then pour your plaster into the mold. The soap will rise quickly, bringing with it any bubbles formed in the plaster.

The soapy solution should be about the same as a pan of dish water. No more soap than that.

For simple objects, like wall plaques, you can use pottery plaster (plaster of paris), mixed very densely. For things like incense burners or trivets or highly detailed figurines, I suggest using hydrocal. Hydrocal is pure white, not as hard as hydrostone but certainly harder the pottery plaster and you can mix it very densely for a non-porous stone-like material.

Just a note of caution. Liquid latex is not suitable for pouring resins.

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