Well, I learned very quickly that Instamold was only good for very simple objects. So for my casting experiment, I decided to make a VERY simple object: a gemstone.

I mixed up a batch of Instamold and pressed a round plastic Christmas ornament into it's surface, creating two perfectly semi-spherical indentations. I did NOT use any sort of mold release (as the instructions on the package of Instamold didn't really say I HAD to use one... Never make a project more complicated than you have to, I always say...)

To create colored gemstones one needs transparent resin dye. (I had heard that food coloring is a bad choice for coloring resin, otherwise I would have used that instead. These three teensy little packages of resin dye cost a full ten bucks!) I found the dye at Michael's crafts, although there are places where you can buy it online.

I mixed up a batch of Pour-On resin and put a few drops of red dye into it (making it a nice shade of salmon-y pink.) I then poured it into the molds. The next day I removed the gems to find--

Okay. Maybe I should have used some kind of barrier between the resin and the Instamold. This was just... gross. (Instamold says it CAN be used for resin-casting, but I'm guessing some sort of barrier or release is necessary. Whatever. I'm not going to try casting with it again. In the future. I'll just use it as a filler for 2-part molds.)

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