Painting silicone with oil paints

I have a general question about silicone painting. I used to create medical prosthetics from silicone and was able to use oil paints mixed with mineral spirits (thinner) and silicone to paint. 25 years later, these prosthetics that I created as study pieces for my fellow medical students are still being used and the paint is showing very minimal signs of wear.
I recently began painting reborns and stumbled on silicone dolls. After researching painting them, I was SHOCKED to see how much companies are charging to paint these babies and create silicone paints.
My question is would the mixture I used 25 years ago work on the blank silicone kits and dolls available now?

I don’t know much about silicone painting, but from what I’ve heard the only thing that binds to silicone is silicone.
The ecoflex silicone that’s used is very expensive and the painting is notoriously difficult to get right. A mold also can’t be used as often as a mold for vinyl. That’s why they charge so much.
Maybe you could order a test piece of ecoflex silicone and try your mixture? Macphersoncrafts.com had a test face available.

I do know that Genesis heat set paints can be used on silicone but still needs heat set and a layer of silicone over to seal them. There is an artist who paints similar to how your describing. She uses extrinsic pigment paints to paint her layers then seals with layers of silicone. I’ve included a link to the painting tutorial for you to see. Defiantly should get a test piece to try it out first :wink:

The silicone you used 25 yrs ago may be different than the silicone used in making the silicone babies. There are different kinds used now. Some are super soft and squishy, others are made with silicone that is a bit more firm. You should definitely do lots of research when it comes to which paints would be best for painting the silicone baby kits. All the ones i seen have been painted using silicone based paints.

A lot of the nice silicones on the market now are unbelievably squishy. I think it’s more important to use only silicone paints on modern silicone babies because the oil paints will crack and peel with all the squishing.

I have used upgraded silicone products to repair more recently created silicone prosthetics that are ecoflex 20 and 30. I used the same oil paint, thinner, and silicone ratio as before with great results. I think i am going to try my technique to see if it works. Thanks for your input!

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I want that face to use as a decoration, lol!

Sounds like it would sure be worth giving it a shot. You just might come up with something wonderful for this whole community!

Please show us when you’re done!!