How To Make A Mold Of Your Hand At Home [Easy DIY Project]
Are you looking for a new art project you can do together with your children or loved one?
Making a homemade hand cast is a great way to make a memory that will last for a long time.
With the right kit, it will be easy, cheap and lots of fun to make your own 3D hand sculpture.
These sculptures are a great way to decorate your house with a meaningful item.
Let’s take a closer look at how to make a cast of your hand.
How to make a hand sculpture in 3 steps
- First, you will need to make a hand mold, which is normally done using alginate.
- Secondly, the mold is filled with casting stone and put to rest for several hours.
- You can then tear away the alginate to find a perfect sculpture of your hand.
What you need for your DIY hand mold
- Luna Bean hand casting kit
- Whisk/Spoon
- Measuring Cup
- Disposable Bowl
Step-by-step instruction
1 Making a mold of your hand
The first step of making a mold of your hand is to mix all the ingredients. So take a big bucket, pour in the cold water with the molding powder from the kit and give it a good stir.
You can use a whisk, spoon or even a blender to mix everything together. But it would be best if you don’t use that tool again for cooking afterward.
The molding powder originally has a white color but will turn a pink/purple color when it gets in contact with water.
The mixture will slowly solidify, so you want to quickly insert your hands. Normally there will be enough for two adult hands or an adult with 2 kids hands.
Depending on how you are holding your hands, you can make almost an infinite amount of hand molds.
We recommend applying some baby oil onto your hand before inserting them to make it easier to take them out afterward.
Keep in mind that the mixture might overflow if you go in too deep with your hand. Just to be safe, you might want to do this step outside of put some newspapers underneath the bucket.
After you insert your hands, you will have to keep your hands still for 3 to 4 minutes as the mixture solidifies and turn white again.
You can then take out your hands slowly. Use as little force as possible to reduce the chance of creating small tears into the mold.
2 Making a cast of your hand
Now that the mold is ready, you can move on to casting your hands. Take a separate bowl and mix the cold water with the stone powder.
You probably want to mix this with your hands while wearing gloves. Because once it is mixed with water, the stone powder is very difficult to clean up.
Slowly pour the mixture into the hand mold. Make sure not to pour too much and overflow the mold.
When the mold is full you want to tap the container several times to remove any air bubbles.
3. Removing the mold from the cast
After waiting for the mixture to harden, you can remove the mold from the bucket and peel away the mold.
The time it takes to fully harden can vary a lot. Sometimes it only takes 20 minutes but to be safe you might want to wait at least an hour.
And your homemade hand sculpture should be done! You might be surprised by the amount of fine detail you are able to see.
These sculpture are a great way to capture memorable events such as weddings or as a simple craft project you can do together with your family.
Decorating Your Cast Hand Sculpture
You can paint your sculpture after it is completely dry. Especially acrylic paint seems to work pretty well.
If you want to obtain a glossy look, it is recommended to apply a primer before you do any painting.
In the video below you can see how to apply an antique bronze finish to your sculpture.
