homemade silicone mold #2: BORDER tutorial

The previous silicone mold tutorial dealt with creating silicone impression of buttons, cameo and other decorative ornaments you can put on the side of a cake. In this series, we will be talking about how to make your own silicone border mold.

You will have to choose a “solid” piece of material to make a silicone border mold out of. You can’t use a flimsy ribbon with a lot of holes in it as it will not leave a good impression on the silicone mold. TEXTURE of the material is also very important so I highly recommend materials that has a lot of texture and details but solid at the same time.

In this tutorial, I have to use “seal-dit” to seal the materials I am making a mold impression of. I bought seal-dit from makeyourownmolds.com. Here’s the link to it-http://www.makeyourownmolds.com/how-to-use-seal-dit-this link is very helpful as it tells you what seal-dit does and how it affects your finished silicone mold.

To start with, gather your materials listed in this photo. I bought my silicone from Michael’s. They sell two brands-1.Amazing Mold Putty and 2.Easy Mold Silicone Putty.

Each brand comes with two components that must be mixed in equal amount to create a silicone mold. Each of this box cost $19.99, I always use my 40-50% coupon to buy this (reducing the cost even further)

The “dish” I used is made out of cardboard box top that I fashioned into a long rectangular open top container about 1/2-3/4 inch deep, 1 inch in width, length should depend on how long do you want your mold to be.

with your rough bristle brush, brush seal-dit all over the border material to be molded (including the backing if using beaded materials) brush off/wipe off excess seal-dit, set side.

take equal amount of silicone component (I use my ever trusted tablespoon to measure the silicone component, you can also use a weighing scale. 1 tbsp of each silicone component will make a 1 inch wide by 8 inch long border mold, if rope border mold with 1/2 inch in diameter is being created, 1 tbsp of each silicone component will yield a 1 inch wide by 5 inch long silicone border)

Knead this until uniform color is achieved, work fast and precise as you only have 3 minutes of working time with this type of silicone mixture

1. roll your silicone mixture into a sausage shape, remember, we’re making a silicone border mold
2. lay silicone mixture into the prepared “dish”
3. flatten the mixture into the dish by pushing down on it with your index finger
4. lay your prepared border material on top of the silicone mixture
5. push down on the border material to embed impression into the silicone and create a cavity, you can use your index finger to do this or you can use the top end of your brush (or even a ball tool). if border material have scalloped edges, use the top end of your brush to push the edge down into the silicone. remember to work fast and precise as this brand of silicone mold material has only 3 minutes of work time.

let cure per package direction

to remove molded border material off the cured silicone mold, simply lift one end of the material

and pull it away from the silicone mold. molded material will come off easily without any resistance

sample finished silicone border mold with its corresponding sugar impression :)

here’s a simple project I made using my homemade silicone rope border mold

all the buttons on the above photo was made out of fondant, brushed with golden bronze luster dust, all from my homemade silicone molds
You can also find more pictures of my cake projects using my homemade silicone molds on my facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/CoutureCakesbyRose