Sand dollar epoxy necklace made from a custom mold

A few weeks ago, I got a HUGE box of supplies from Plaid.

It was the most amazing selection of the new line of Martha Stewart jewelry available at Michael's.

I already posted about my woodland bracelet that I made with epoxy clay, and enamel.

Today, I am going to show you how I made my very own silicone mold of a sand dollar and turned that in to a necklace.

The new line of jewelry has some amazingly easy rhinestones and settings to work with.

Each of the boxes is labeled with the size making it quite easy to chose the right items to work with.

I used a toothpick in my jewelry glue to make an easy fine tip to apply the glue with to the settings.

We all want to hurry up and use our glue thinking that it will dry so fast that you won't be able to work with it, but jewelry glue is the opposite.

You want to let the glue cure for about 2-3 minutes before applying your rhinestone.

I used this cool wax tipped tool to pick up the small rhinestones.

The stones stick to the tip like magic!

I love magic.

To create your custom mold, you need the Martha Stewart custom mold kit.

It comes with a silicone base, catalyst, a measuring cup and stir sticks.

I used my own bowl that I didn't care about using again, and a sand dollar that I found at our local beach.

Measure out your catalyst and pour into your bowl.

You will need 1 tsp of catalyst and 1 fluid ounce of silicone base.

Pour the measured contents into your container.

Stir them together well.

Let the mixture cure for 6-8 hours.

You want the item you are molding to sit on top of the mold, not sink down in to it.

I let the sand dollar sit in my mold over night.

I was a bit nervous in the morning about removing my sand dollar.

It was pretty stuck in there!

But since I didn't care about taking it out in one piece, I broke it up and removed it piece by piece.

Here is the completed sand dollar silicone mold that I was left with.

I love that you can still see so many of those subtle sand dollar details.

I brushed olive oil into the mold to prepare it for my epoxy clay.

I used red epoxy clay because I was out of the white.

I thought it would make a statement.

I also put a hole in the top of the epoxy clay with a toothpick to make it into a charm after it drys.

After about 24 hours, the clay is dry and you can remove your custom piece from the mold.

I wiped my piece down before preparing to put a glaze on it.

The red was a bit much and I wanted to tone it down with the gold and white glaze.

I used a pouncer to put the glaze on the sand dollar to give it some texture.

Several coats were needed.

Let your glaze dry about an hour between coats.

 While the glaze was drying, I found a necklace in my jewelry box.

I got together a few rhinestone charm settings that I had made earlier and my round nose pliers to remove the feather from my necklace.

 I put my sand dollar and my charms on the necklace in place of the feather.

I think it's a super cool, unique custom piece that I will get some wear out of during these summer months.

 I must confess, I was most excited about the silicone mold kit.

The possibilities are endless.

What would you make a mold of?