Silicone Rubber

My professor Tom and I decided that working with silicone rubber would be an excellent way to round out my advanced makeup learning experience, so we went and ordered some from Smooth-On, specifically the Dragon Skin FX Pro trial size.  It comes as a two part process, both are clear and goopy.

The instructions are pretty simple, mix equal parts together. This particular product starts to set in about 15 minutes and fully cures in 45 minutes. I excitedly mixed some up and poured a sample amount into a Wilton silicone mold that I bought off Amazon. I tried one bird with mold release (baby oil) and one without. They both came out easily.

While the birds were curing I used the remaining silicone to create a cut on my arm. The material was harder to work with than videos make it out to be. I applied the silicone with a popsicle stick. Once cured, I powdered and applied makeup and a little blood. The makeup did not want to adhere to the silicone, and the blood was even more difficult because the silicone is so resistant to water.

Next I wanted to try out attaching a piece of silicone to skin. I picked out one of the birds and applied it to my arm with pros-aide, coated it with pros-aide, applied makeup, and powdered. By coating the appliance in pros-aide it made it a little bit easier to apply makeup to the silicone.

This makeup stayed on fairly well, but the bird started to peel off after only 30 minutes. The pros-aide does not seem to work very well with the silicone, and the packaging suggests using products such as Skin Tite silicone adhesive or medical grade pressure sensitive adhesives which, according to my research, come as a tape product (can be found here and here and with a basic Google search). The Pros-aide was fine for a temporary situation though, and I will probably continue to use this method. 

Finally, I poured some more silicone into my mold and will be using them next week for a design!