This time we were making molds of our fingers out of alginate and casting them using plaster! The process was pretty straightforward, and though we started our molds and casts during class, due to oversight most of us forgot to pull the finger cast out of the mold so they stayed wet for more than 4 days; in the end, most of us had to repeat the process and make new fingers.

Now on to the details of the process, Sarah and I decided to make our casts together since we were both staying after class to work on the assignment. The first step was mixing alginate with water in a 1:1 ratio (by volume, as the TAs found out), after which we would have to quickly fill silicone cups with the alginate mixture and place our finger inside since it would start to set in less than 5 minutes and pretty much solidify by 10 minutes. Each of us used about 8 ounces of the mixture to fill in the cup since our fingers didn’t amount to too much volume so we would have a nice height to our molds.

Next, after having our molds set, we mixed  the plaster in a 2:1 ratio plaster to water. According to the instructions we would have a little more time to carefully pour the plaster mixture into the molds, but, whether it was weather conditions or something else, Sarah and I noticed the plaster quickly setting as we were pouring it. The mixture felt kind of tacky and thicker than what we remembered when we did the process in class, so we proceeded to add a little more water and mixing again; this time we were left with what felt like a little watery-mixture, but as it began to set it became more viscous like the one in class so we poured this one into the molds.

The next day, I came to free my finger cast from their molds and noticed they felt a little soft and wet to touch so I left them air drying at the OEDK for another 2 days. Once I came to post-process them 2 days later they felt a lot more rigid and even a little lighter. Satisfied with my product, I proceeded to paint them with Grey primer as the only other color available to paint was a very saturated red that I didn’t really like. After waiting around 30 minutes for the primer to dry I went to check on them, when it occurred to me that I could remove the excess plaster from when we poured it by carefully breaking this pieces off of the cast. I did so, applied another coat and filled in the parts that were now exposed by removing the excess plaster and waited another 30 minutes. To finish off, I applied a clear coat to the fingers and stood them up to dry on a wood block someone had used to do the same thing. Overall it was a fun experience, it kind of reminded me of school art classes from when we were kids.

Cost	Price	Amount	Source	Quantity	Unit	TOTAL
Alginate Impression material	$18.99	500	Amazon.com	378.77	g	$14.39
Casting Plaster	$17.00	1814.37	Amazon.com	231.86	g	$2.17
Crafts Artist	$15.00	per hour	Ziprecruiter.com	2	hours	$30.00
Quality Control	$18.00	per hour	Ziprecruiter.com	1	hours	$18.00
					NET TOTAL	$64.56