A Week With Li-Qua-Che 3.0

Due to the Dallas Art Fair with 83 galleries, multiple lectures and a few side art events, plus posting about the art fair for Art and Seek, these last two BFS blog posts about Li-Qua-Che had to be postponed until this week. Anyway, back to fun with liquid paper mache... Size does make a difference.

In our past Li-Qua-Che projects we made large tiles that had issues with de-molding, warpage and strength. In this project we scaled down the tile to 5"x 8". We also dropped the idea of incorporating open areas/holes into the design. Above is our smaller finished tile after curing over night. You can tell by the surface that it still needs some light sanding with 0000 steel wool to smooth it out.

This photo shows the plaster mold and the back side of the cast tile. The compactness of this tile design avoided issues of warpage. The tile also held up to the stress test of being dropped on the floor. (An accident that we will take credit for doing)

We did notice that the edges of the tile were a bit ruff. With that in mind, when designing a one piece mold, the model should be fabricated a little taller so the ragged edges can be sanded down to form a straight, smooth edge.