My last project were some… finger hooks! Yes, my own fingers…
I bet you want to make your own too! This is how I did it:
MOLDING and CASTING:
- The first thing we did was make our own finger molds.
- I mixed alginate with water first and then placed two fingers inside the container.
- I waited for the mixture to solidify and then removed my fingers.
- Then, I made a mixture of plaster and water.
- I can’t recall the exact ratios for both the alginate and plaster mixtures but it was based on what the instructions said as well as previous and current experiences from students and the teaching team. I personally based my plaster mix on what the first students were giving feedback of (I estimated it), but it turned out a bit thick. Another classmate was then done with hers, but her mixture was a bit more liquid; she told me and so I mixed what she had left over with mine and it turned out good to pour inside the mold.
- I then filled the alginate mold with this plaster mixture.
- After that, I placed two screws inside using a cardboard to hold them at the top of the alginate molds.
Alginate mold with plaster poured inside the fingers and screws on top
- I let this dry and removed the alginate mold
- Since this material is not reusable, I just broke it to do so.
Removing the alginate mold
Broken alginate mold
Fingers after removing the mold
- Since this material is not reusable, I just broke it to do so.
- Then, I saw that the bottom of the fingers (where the nail is) was not flat, so I tried improving this:
- I first screwed the fingers into a piece foam and rotated them. this got rid of some thin, spiky edges.
- I then removed the plaster from the bottom of the nail and sanded the bottom of the fingers as well as a bit on the bottom edges to make it flatter and smoother. I used 320 sanding paper.
- Then I screwed the fingers into foam again and turned. This was to improve the face that went against the wall.
Working on the fingers
Smoothening the bottom of the finger hooks
- Then I was ready to finish my piece:
- I painted the fingers with spray paint, spraying it at a distance to not get fully dense areas of paint
- I did first the bottom of the finger, with pink, red and white.
- Then I screwed the finger into foam and sprayed it in this order: pink, red, pink, red, white.
I painted the wrong finger! (forgot to wear gloves)
- Then I let it dry overnight and painted a ring with a bolt on one finger, and three dots on the other finger’s nail, using swabs and spray paint
After paining the decorations
- Then I let it dry for about one hour, and I finally applied a clear coat to seal it and make it gloss.
- I painted the fingers with spray paint, spraying it at a distance to not get fully dense areas of paint
- And, done!!
IMPROVEMENTS:
- This project was pretty straightforward. I managed to do both fingers during class time, so I did not have to redo the process. I did have a couple of small complications, but the result turned out fine!
- One if the issues that I had though, was that when I poured the plaster, I poured too much, so the part between my fingers, which was made on the mold too, got filled. I wanted the fingers to be independent from each other, so I used paper to remove plaster from the middle until I saw that they would dry independently.
- Another complication I run into was that I first placed the screws the other way around! Luckily I noticed right after and I could redo this. I simply took them out and added to new screws.
Opps! Wrong way…
- Lastly, I struggled a bit to paint the ring on the finger. First, I tried using paper cutouts, but this did not work. I considered cardboard instead but I thought it might be hard for small details, so in the end I decided to use swabs and spray paint. I added some spray paint on an improvised palette (glove) and painted on the fingers. I first added a black and sparkly ring, but I did not like it, so I added gold on top and then made the outline black. It was not super easy to ‘balance’ the gold and the black and I also tried some other colors in between before settling on these colors as well as the design.
Some paper cutouts that I tried first…
COST:
Labor time:
- In total I worked an estimated 2 hours and 10 minutes (130 minutes)
- This task was not as labor intensive or stressful as the others, so I will make it $12/hour
- Thus, the labour cost would be:
- 130 min * $12 / 60 min = $26
Materials:
- I used alginate and plaster as the main materials.
- I am not sure how much exactly we used, but I think it might have been 200 grams of alginate. Assuming it was so, this would be about:
- 0.440925 pounds * $54.97 / 3 pounds = $8.07921575, based on the cost of a specific bag sold on Amazon [1].
- As for the plaster, we used less than this (we used some tiny cups). Assuming it was about 50 grams, this would be about:
- 0.110231 pounds * $16.99 / 5.21 pounds = $0.3594673109, based on the cost of another bag sold on Amazon [2].
Based on these, the total cost is: $26 + $8.07921575 + $0.3594673109 = $34.43868306 or about $34.
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