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Lesson Plans


Re: Plaster mask project--how to make a positive

From: SANDRA ROWLAND (serowland)
Date: Thu Aug 17 2000 - 19:17:43 PDT

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    Rachael,

    I have three plaster positive in my garden coming out of the ground I
    did using a dental alginate (the stuff the dentist uses to make molds of
    your teeth) as the negative. I have done them with the plaster strips
    but the detail is greater with the alginate. The only problem with
    alginate is that it can be used only once where the plaster negative can
    be used until it falls apart (loosing detail each use). One word of
    advice is the you should still use the plaster strips on the outside for
    stablilty. The advantages of alginate is you cannot burn the face like
    plaster, it smalls of mint, and it is very quick (less than 2 minutes).
    You can also open your mouth or stick out your tongue, although then the
    positive can be tricky. Alginate is also easy to remove, ask the model
    to wiggle their face to loosen and remove. Disadvantages are that you
    have to be very, and I do mean very, fast. Really two people are
    necessary, my son was a great help and my husband was useless! It
    doesn't work well for wax, you could make a plaster positve then again
    make another plaster negative in this case. Hope this was of help.

    Sandra in AL

    Rachael wrote:
    >
    > I have finished making a mask using plaster strips but would like to make a
    > plaster of paris positive from this negative. What would be the best way
    > to preserve as much detail as possible? What releasing agent should I use?
    > Will the negative cast be ruined in the process? Thanks for your help--
    > 

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