Salaric

I got two halloween monster making kits from The Works in Stroud for my Scouts to use. The kit came with moulds of pumkin headed monsters, frankienstien monsters, mummys, vampires and vampire bats. The moulds where in two halves that you had to press together however they where made out of flimsy plastic that I associate with food packaging. Some of them didnt click together properlly and some of them even came out of the box slightly crushed – not a good start.

Still the kids mixed up the plaster in the little grey pouring cups provided in the kit and followed the instructions, but the stuff would not pour into the moulds as the feeder channel of the mould was far too small and on some of the monsters had a nasty sloping bit just before the main shape of the monster was reached. In frustration some of the children tried adding more water but by this point it was starting to dry and had hard lumps in it. Others opened the moulds and sqidged the plaster in having added more powder to it to make it stiffer. They banged the moulds on the table to dislodge the air bubbles but as some of the mould – the mummy in particular had bubbles the size of whole arms that wouldn’t shift the whole thing was a bit of a disastor.

I took the moulds home as you are supposed to remove the monsters from the mould after an hour to let them dry properly. Those we tried to open where just gloopy mess and those that I left once dry just shattered upon open the moulds or if they remained whole they where shapeless blobs.

I thought that the kid was just too hard for the kids and that they must have done something wronge with following the instruction and as I have a huge tub of plaster of paris that we got from Hindles I thought I’d make them a set of the little statues which they could then paint.

However – me and my husband ran into the exact same problems as the kids and our attempt was only slightly better in that we hit the tub we where mixing the plaster in on the workbench to get rid of bubbles before pouring.

But fundimentaly you could not pour the plaster into the moulds as it was too thick and the moulds where badly constructed.

I would say this is the worst craft disastor I’ve ever had and to avoid these kids – I’ve bought other stuff like the big box of craft from the Works and they have been fantastic value for money but this kid definatly isn’t!