A few weeks ago, the lovely people at ThermoMorph invited us (along with numerous other bloggers and vloggers) to try out their plastic moulding product and let them and you know what we thought of it. After a few days of research into the product and having a play around with it for ourselves we thought it was about time to let you know a little bit more about it.
ThermoMorph is small plastic pellets that when put into hot water, they melt together to make a clear moulding material. Above, you can see it in the lid, small white balls of plastic, then you can see it below in the boiling water turning to the clear form and pooling together. It is cool to watch it turn from white to clear, makes you feel all science-y!
When you take it from the water with tongs or like me a metal spoon, it is cool enough to touch almost straight away, despite this I would still add caution against using this product with young children as it is still too warm for little fingers.
It is very fun to play around with as it feels quite bouncy, it is almost the consistency of toffee, you can pull it into strings, roll it into balls and mould it between your fingers very easily. I was unsure as to whether it would hold a good impression from the things I had chosen to mould, but I persevered.
I laid down some freezer paper to work on just in case it got messy and rolled out a small amount with a rolling pin. I made sure to wet the rolling pin first as I tested it and it was sticking, the water seemed to work to stop that.
I had seen other people use ThermoMorph as a material to make moulds or to take moulds and so I thought I would try it out for myself. I chose a few different things to make impressions, some acrylic gem stones, resin flower cabochons and metal buttons. I wanted to see if any of the different objects make a better impression and if the more subtle 'cuts' on the gems would loose their sharpness after moulding.
So I started by pressing the buttons into the first piece of the ThermoMorph that I had rolled out. They pushed in easily and I left them in whilst the product hardened.
I then took some more and made two more moulds with the cabochons and the gems.
You can tell when the product has set because it returns to its opaque white colour, this does happen quite fast, so you do need to work quite quickly. One of the advantages though, is that by dropping the product back into the hot water it will melt again, so you can start over if need be. No wastage at all, even all your little off-cuts can go back to be used again.
As soon as my moulds had turned white I popped out the gems and took a look at how they had worked. I must admit I was impressed with how sharp the quality of the moulds were.
And how accurately they had picked up the intricate designs from both the buttons and the flowers.
The next thing I tried was taking some impressions from the moulds. I started by using the ThermoMorph itself to take the impression. I was again surprised by how well these turned out as it was only the gem stone ones that were not as crisp as I would have liked.
I also used some polymer clay to take some impressions too and as you can see they turned out pretty well too.
The teal and white coloured ones are the ThermoMorph painted with normal acrylic paint and the red and pink ones are polymer clay. The only down side to the moulds was that it was quite hard to get the clay out after pushing it in, as the moulds were not flexible enough to push the clay back out again so I did end up distorting a few as I was getting them out of the moulds.
ThermoMorph is a great product but having worked with lots of different modelling products in the past, the down side for this is that the setting time is a little fast. If I am free hand sculpting or moulding I like to be able to work with the product for a while and you don't really have the chance to do that with this. Although it can be carved into after it has set so that may be an option for some and as I said it would be hard to use with small children because of the hot water element involved. However, older children would have a blast with this stuff, from a science and changing of forms element, as well as a creative tool.
All in all I would say that
ThermoMorph was a great product to have a play with for the day. It does exactly what it says on the tin. It takes moulding very well, it makes great impression material and it is easy and fun to use. It takes paint really well, the teal was just two coats of normal acrylic and I saw some people had used glitter and colourings to change the colour before moulding too, so the options are wide open. I love the ability to re-use any of the off cuts or 'mistakes' by throwing it back in the pot for use next time.
It is a brilliant, quality product and if you get the chance to give it a try I would highly recommend it. You can easily get a hold of it on
Amazon.
I would love to hear from you guys as to what you think you could or would use this product for? Let us know in the comments below.
Sammy xxx
