The official product description on Amazon is:
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| Picture source - Thermomorph website |
What on earth is ThermoMorph?
It's a revolutionary plastic that allows anyone with a kettle to make unique rock solid items in minutes.
Simply add some of the granules to a cup/bowl of recently boiled water and wait for them to turn clear. Scoop the plastic from the water and mold it into the desired shape using your hands or your tools. Once you have the desired shape leave it out in the air and watch as it sets ROCK hard in under 10 minutes.
This stuff is amazingly handy and can be used for a huge variety of projects:
- - Instantly fix broken items.
- - Use it to "hack" items for amazing new uses.
- - Sculpt the perfect add-on to a halloween costume.
- - Mold the perfect costume ring.
Once you've molded the perfect shape, you can paint it, drill it, varnish it or whatever else you want to do. It really is amazingly versatile!
Once you've used this stuff you wont know what you did without it!
I decided to get the girls involved and they are aged 6, (nearly) 13 and 16. We followed the instructions and spooned some of the pellets into a jug of slightly cooled boiling water. (Around 60°C but my thermometer only goes up to 50°C, so there was a bit of guess work.)
When ready the product goes clear, remove from the jug - we used barbecue tongs at first, don't go sticking your hand in a jug of not long boiled water! (Ahem!) When you pull it apart it's stringy like cheese. We found it easier in the end to cut chunks off of the blob of clear plastic. It didn't stick to the (bog standard) scissors we used.
We decided to make duckies first. We've only ever done this with melted crayons and UTEE. Both times were extremely messy and with differing results. When the Thermomorph was cool enough to handle we cut off chunks and squidged them into the molds.
As with all my reviews, the following is my own personal and honest opinion.
While we waited a couple of minutes for the pellets to clump together and go clear, we scouted around for some things to make molds with. We'd already dug out my old duckie silicone ice-cube tray but as soon as I'd been offered this review I knew I wanted to try making my own molds.
We all said how much less messy this way was and we all liked the results. With our first few there was some ragged edges where we were misjudging the amount to use. We found that while the product is still pliable you can use a pair of scissors to snip round and tidy up the edges.
My pictures don't really show the level of detail - it picked up all the wing and beak indentations just lovely. When the product dries it goes solid and white - this happens within a few minutes - you get used to working fast. I wondered whether you might have more working time on a warmer day - it was quite cold when we were doing this. We set Ruby (age 6) to work painting one up. She used no prep - acrylic paint straight on top of the plastic.
Next, I was chomping at the bit to try mold making. First we tried Barbie's face. I've wanted a face mold for a looong time. Top tip. Hot plastic onto plastic Barbie face... not a good idea. Barbie will recover in time, you will be pleased to know.
We tried a big metal button that I've been hoarding for years - that took a nice impression...
Then one of those Tim Holtz china things...
Not such a success with that one - think it was to long and thin, was a job to release it and leave the impression.
Next, an ornament that used to belong to my Mum's own Mum. Something I treasure because she did...
So. The big question. Did they work? Well. I tried using the Thermomorph to take an impression off of the molds. No joy - it kept bonding with the mold as it cooled - I suppose because it is the same product. We scratched our heads a bit and then I remembered I had a small lump of Fimo and a slab of air drying clay in the shed...
No joy really with the Tim Holtz thingy as explained above. The button took a pretty cool, delicate impression with the clay which you can see here...
But the star of the show by far, I'm so chuffed with this... just look...
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| Air drying clay. |
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| Air drying clay and original. |
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| Glittery Fimo |
I'm not ashamed to say - there was a fair amount of dancing round the kitchen! I love how the clay versions look kind of creepy and the Fimo, just so sweet. I love the amount of detail. So much detail has been captured - I don't see that detail in the original - it must be there obviously but I don't see it!
So then, after calming down a bit - it was tidy up time. There is absolutely zero waste with this product. Anything you do wrong, anything you snip off, chuck it back in the pot and it can be melted again and again. As a result and after a good couple of hours playing - my pot is still almost full. I'll show you that picture again. This is what's left.
At the time of my receiving this product to test it was £19.95 on Amazon - on checking today it is £15.95. Do I think it's worth it? Going to be honest, gut reaction before I'd received the product would have been no. After having a play around? Hell yes! When I went to Ally Pally in April I stood dithering for a good 10 minutes over whether to buy this tiny, tiny tub of mold mixture - it was at least £20 as I recall. As it was I couldn't justify the cost for so little. I still have at least two thirds of a 500g tub of this stuff to make many more molds. I think it's going to last ages. I've already warned the family that I want to raid the charity shops for some ornaments with interesting looking faces! But this isn't a one trick product - I want to try making rings as suggested in the product description - I reckon carving it while pliable will be fun too! Such a unique product.
Love it. Just love it. And it was a pleasant surprise finding that out.
Many thanks to David at Thermomorph for sending me a tub to play with. And thank you for stopping by today.
