The brief was to create a tealight holder inspired by either 50’s, 60’s or 70’s design as a retrospective exercise in design. The holder must use casting as the primary manufacturing process. I created a tealight holder inspired by the 1960’s pop art and space/atomic age. My design was cast using white Polyurethane in a two-part silicone mold. Finished with high gloss spray paint and a high gloss clearcoat.

For this exercise we were required to animate our mold exploding.

Smoothing print lines and blemishes using a combination of car body filler, superglue, sawdust and poly filler.

Painting between each filling/sanding layer to provide contrast. Alternating colours of paint shows high spots and low spots to help create a perfectly smooth surface. 

Using an oil-based clay and corrugated plastic I created the form for half of my two-part mold. I then poured in a tin-cure silicone to make part 1. Once set I flipped over the mold and poured part 2. Using the end of a paintbrush I created a series of indents to work as registration pins to align the two mold halves. The runner and riser were created using wooden dowels attached to the pattern.

This image shows the process from the rough 3D print, to the smooth pattern then to the cast tealight holder with both runner and riser attached. After some sanding the pure white tealight holder is ready for painting and finishing.