This last weekend I was able to go meet up with a friend of mine and work through the entire process of making an artisan keycap, aside from sculpting it myself. With the master key made, we still needed to create silicon molds in order to cast more than one cap at a time.
What I found out was that every step of the process was incredibly sensitive and for two n00bs, we were pretty error prone. If we didn't use enough release, we used too much. If we got the silicon mix right, we didn't glue the sticks down well enough. If we got the colors looking super good, we screwed up the stem somehow.
Creating anything out of this medium is time (and money) consuming, labor intensive, nerve racking and scientifically complex. But more than any of those things, it's fun. Cracking open the pressure pot after a half hour or an hour and pulling apart your mold is super exciting. Then, if your creation came out good is an excellent sense of accomplishment.
After going through this process a few times, I feel like I gained a huge amount of respect for every artisan in the scene. It truly is a labor of love and looking at the caps I've collected over the last couple of years, I'm inspired by the amount of creativity, patience and care it must have took to create them.
Thanks all.