While it was not my original goal to create E.T. fingers, I saw so many people using the gold spray paint and gold finger reference that I chose silver and tried going for an alien reference. Full disclosure: I should have taken more pictures. However, it was challenging since I had my hands full.

I worked with several different students to repeat this project. The first student I worked with had already done it several times, which provided me with more insight while creating the casting liquid (plaster) and the mold(alginate water mixture.)

 

Creating the Mold

In my first attempt to create the mold, I saw that it required a 1:1 ratio between the alginate and water. However, I was curious to know if this ratio was by volume or weight. I asked the TA, and they said it was by weight, but I thought I needed to improvise.  I did start off with the 1:1 ratio. However, it looked too thick and powdery, and I was unsure if this was how it looked before or was actually how it was supposed to look. Instead of basing everything on the suggested ratio, I thought it would be more fortuitous to eyeball it instead. For example, I knew the alginate water mixture needed to be thick and chunky, but it still required good flowability to be poured out easily.

I learned this through experience. The first and most successful time I did this, the alginate was still relatively liquid-like; however, the second time, it was too chunky, and I had to literally use my hands to scrap off the alginate and put it in the cup.

 

After creating the mixture, I paced my fingers inside the mold. The second time I did this, my partner and I used the same cup since we did not produce enough algae, and we put the fur of our fingers into one cup, as seen below. Despite our mixture being more viscous than usual, the curing time was still 8 minutes. My thinking was that if the curing time was still the same, the ratio we used for our mixture would still be optimal.

The reason I tried making this mixture again, despite already having fingers, was that I recently had a nasty cut on my finger that I placed a band-aid on. I thought it would be neat to see a mold of my finger on a band-aid.

Making the plaster

I used the same logic when making the plaster. I used a 21 ratio of water to plaster; however, like the alginate, I eyeballed the consistency of the mixture till I had a more liquid and thin mixture. I made it lighter by adding water little by little at a time. Despite doing this a second time, perhaps I put too much water in, as my fingers came out soft and brittle and broke immediately after I took out the mold. Regardless, I did this successfully the first time by not being too generous with the water.

 

My fingers turned out perfectly the first time and had little puppets, which may have been a reason for not mixing entirely. However, overall, the finger still trot solid, concrete, and nowhere near as brittle as the second batch I made

Post Processing

For post-processing, I aimed to make E.T. fingers, so I spray-painted the fingers gray. I let the fingers dry after a couple hours and then moved on to applying a clear coat to make it look shinier. However, I suddenly realized that E.T. is not grey, and I so ignorantly assumed all aliens are gray. Regardless, I was still able to successfully apply post-process steps.

 

Thoughts for next time

Next time, I would be more generous with the water I use to create my alginate mixture and more gear with the water I use to make my plaster mixture. Furthermore, I would be more content with clean-up, have trashcans around me consent, and clean the plaster and alginate as soon as possible before they become too complicated.

 

 

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materiasl	Plaster of Paris	$6.99/4lbs	Staples	1 lb	$2
	Algenate	$19.99/lb	Amazon	1 lb	$20
	Screws	$15.99/179 screws	Amazon	4 screws	$0.36
	Gray Spray paint	$6.99/can	Amazon	1 can	$6.99
	Clear Coat	$6.19/can	Amazon	1 can	$6.19
Labor	Injection Molding Enigneer	$36/hr	ZipRecruiter	3 hours	$36.00
	Prototyping Engineer	$15.00	Zippia	1 hour	$15.00
	Spray Painter	$17.41/hour	ZipRecruiter.	1 hour	$17.41
Overhead	Water	$27/month	Moving Texas USA	1 hour	$0.38
Misc.	Excess Plaster of Paris	$6.99/4lbs	Staples	0.5 lb	$3.50
	Excess Algenate	$19.99/lb	Amazon	0.5 lb	$10
Total					$118