Playing with Clay

FH and I got home late last Monday and I was knackered. I also had no plans for my streams Tuesday and Wednesday. I'd been thinking up a new sculpted teapot design in the car, so I decided on just playing with clay and seeing where things took me.

Whilst rummaging for colors, I found some pre-mixed "dough" colors leftover from workshops I'd taught and decided they needed to be used up as well.

 The first thing I played with was a cane for candies and cake decorations. I attempted a strawberry design. It's... ok. I'm not super happy with it. The design itself was not well planned out and the result is "meh" in quality. I can do better, so that one is going where it should've gone first. The sketch pad. Also I don't know if the clay had started to dry out or if it was just really cold in my studio, but I was having problems with my canes cracking and breaking apart as I was working them to make them smaller.

After I got fed up with the cane foolishness, I switched to my prototypes for new teapots. The center tomato is plain. The other two are based on one of the emote designs E-Jipt uses in his Twitch channel. It's a "Not Tomato." Long story. The gloss varnish and the sunlight weren't playing nicely and this is the best picture I have of them. The tomato teapot itself still needs tweaking. Also I'd like to make them a bit smaller.

The leftover bits of cane got the teapot treatment as well. Also some of it got turned into lollipops.

Wednesday was "baking day." I started out making a simple split-top loaf and a braided loaf. Then I decided to try marbled rye. I'm pretty pleased with that experiment. The rye can use some tweaking, but this is a good first result.

Various dinner rolls followed as did cookies in different states of preparation.

While I was working, a viewer asked how I'd made the tomato teapots the day before, I so made another to demonstrate. And E-Jipt suggested a Pokemon-themed teapot while I was working so I tried that as well.

The tomato teapot has more detail than the first versions. I added more vine details and am happier with it. The Pokeball teapots... not so much. They're too big and clunky for one. I turned one into a cookie jar as it looks better size-wise. Also the red smeared everywhere on the white bottoms. So they get to join the strawberry cane back at the drawing board. I may end up making the two haves of the Pokeballs separately and "gluing" them together with liquid polymer after par-baking them. Just to keep the red from staining the white. I'm not sure yet. But it's a neat project idea to play with.

Thursday night was the mini group meeting and we all made the Plein Air set from True 2 Scale's tutorial. That was a lot of fun. I'd made mine already so I could help everyone else figure their out.

The next several meetings will be all hat shop oriented. Hatboxes are next month, but I'm not teaching that one. However I need to make some tools for making silk roses and start practicing a hat design people liked. Unless I'm complete rubbish at it, that will be June's project. We go out for dinner in July, but I'm going to suggest having an all-day play day in July sometime. Don't know how that will go. 

That's all for today. I need to go sketch up some cane designs and start research mini hat shop items. See you next Sunday!

In Like A Lion

This is the sight that greeted us this morning. We're expecting even more this afternoon. I'd say this would be a great day to stay in and do minis, but I'm having trouble focusing this weekend. My dad had a stroke on Friday and is in the hospital...200 miles away through crummy weather. My mom was snowed in at the hospital last night.

I did get a few things done during the week that I am happy to share.

More paper doilies! I think I'm done with these until I need a specific color, or I find more colored envelopes that I stashed for the purpose.

I auditioned three shades of green Gallery Glass for my thumbprint cookies. [Bellow, center] Two made the cut... one for St. Patrick's Day and the other for Christmas. I also tried a new-to-me icing recipe for minis. It's from Angie Scarr's Masterclass book. It's smoother and runnier than the way I usually do my frosting.

I really like the way it looks on the iced cookies [Below left], but not so much for this type of cake. [Below, right] It's much easier to mix and tint than the way I usually make frosting, which is a definite plus. And there are many, many more things I can use this type of frosting for in the future so it is a winner... just not for these cakes. Perhaps with some additional tweaking I can find a happy medium.

 Finally I went out and found some more bead organizers to neaten things up around here. This one is just for St. Patrick's Day themed foods/canes. Time to try and get busy filling it up the rest of the way.

That's all for this week. Stay warm!

Cakes and More

Lots of mini baking was happening this past week!

The mini Green Velvet cake samples are done for starters.

Along with some un-cut cakes.

But I also had a go at making some shamrock cookies,

put sticks in lollipops,

and punched paper doilies out of some papers and envelops I had laying around.

I'm quite pleased with how the cookies turned out. I will probably make more once I finish frosting the other sliced cake pieces that are waiting on me to make more "frosting." I did make some plain old round cookies too, but I forgot to get their picture. They aren't decorated yet, so you're not missing out. Hopefully I get back to them in the coming week.

That's all for now. I need to get back to some real world work around the house. See you next week!

An Early Start

Not on the day, but for a workshop/project I'm teaching next month. The local mini group will be making 1:12 scale green velvet cakes for the March project. I spent time this past week getting a few things ready for them. [Oh and I hope everyone had a nice St. Valentine's Day!]

What took up most of my time was the cane of candy I designed for them to decorate the cake with. In fact I haven't even gotten the cake part started beyond deciding on colors and making notes for the handout.

But the cane is finished and I've gotten half of it rolled out and baked!

I still have about 3 inches of the unbaked cane to roll out and bake. I will probably try to come up with a few other things to do with it.

I've already made lollipops and stick candy.

And of course there are some teapots made from bits trimmed off the cane ends after stretching.

For fun, I tried out a cookie jar type thing with a chunk of cane end, just to see how it would look. The bit I used was at the first end I trimmed off when I started stretching the cane, so the shamrock design isn't quite all there, but I'm actually quite taken with it and will try doing another one or two.

I'm not going to have the mini group members actually make the cane at the meeting. It takes way too long. But they are getting the instructions and design in their handout in case they'd like to make more at a later date. They're also each getting a piece of finished cane to use for their project.

I'm also planning on putting the finished project instructions up on my Etsy page as a download for a couple of dollars at some point. There may be someone out there who would like the instructions.

That's all for this week. I need to get working on the little cakes so I can get pictures and finish writing up the handout.

From My Stash 4-22-09

This week I have more pictures of foods I have made. This time it's cookies (biscuits) and they are all loose in their bags. I apologize for a lack of pretty presentation, but I was in a hurry.

Brownies with chopped nuts:
Chocolate chunk cookies:
Chocolate iced bar cut sugar cookies and oatmeal raisisn cookies:
Christmas cookies:
Heart-shaped sugar cookies:
Leaf-shaped sandwich cookies(loved these as a child):
Thumbprint cookies with the oatmeal raisin cookies above them:
Sugar cookies:
I will try and get pictures of some of these plated when I know where they are going to live.

If anyone needs cookies for anything, let me know! ;-)

Fun Filler

Morning everyone! :-)

I haven't had my morning tea yet, so I haven't starting making cakes at the moment. Once I'm awake enough to not slice into my fingers with a tissue blade I will get started.

I ran through pictures of food I've done recently and thought this piece might interest you. A friend needed table and hostess gifts for last year's N.A.M.E. national event. The theme was "Castles and Cottages." After years of sewing gowns for a Renaissance choir when I think of castles I think the Renaissance.

This piece is a Renaissance gingerbread, sculpted to resemble the Tudor Rose, and gilded because that's what cooks to the wealthy did back then. Early gingerbread was not cakey like it is now, it's more like a thick taffy texture, so it was often sculpted for special occasions or to flatter dinner guests.

Inspiration for this piece came from Gode Cookery, a website dedicated to the preservation of Medieval and Renaissance recipes.