It's bloody hot, making yard work feasible only in the very early morning or in the dark of night, which is out of the question, so I've been making minis. I've drifted away from the Manchester for a while because I'm still pondering the electrical layout out for how I will light the house--a gentler way of procrastination. I have one more building project to complete, the entertainment center for the living room and I'm putting that off, too.
With my husband and my grandson off to the mountains camping and participating in an archery shoot over the weekend, I entertained myself by digging out my polymer clay and began to make mini fruits, inspired by Allie's House on Instagram where she posted her quick--and very easy--tutorials on making strawberries and mandarin oranges. I also made blue berries, cantaloup, and lemons--which evolved from a debacle.
Strawberries: Not really happy with my first attempt to make strawberries that I shared last week, I took a lesson for Allie's House on Instagram. I used white Fimo instead of the colored clay, shaped small berries in the palm of my hand, used the needle tool to texture them then painted them with pastel dust. I added a dab of water to the chalk dust, painting on the yellow first to create the seeds--sort of worked. Next, I did the the same with the red. The berries look more realistic. I used white clay for the berries
and a green scrap that I had blended for another project for the leaves and stems. Finally I baked them (with the blueberries) at 275 for 15 minutes. The needle tool was perfect for lifting the tiny leaves and sliding them in the dimple on the top the berry.
After they had cooled, I applied the satin glaze.
Blueberries: When you look at a container of blueberries, some that are not quite ripe have just a touch of reddish purple, but my berries are fully ripe. These are the colors that I used to create my berries. I like to have a sample of the real fruit to copy as I work on own creations from scratch. I did look for Youtube tutorials and found a couple then did my own thing with the blending of colors. I did learn from the tutorials how to sculpt the stem end. You can see how the colors compare with the real berries.
Size fruit is tricky because you want to make sure that the sizes are relative and realistic for 1:12 scale, so as I made the various fruits I had to carefully consider the sizes and make sure that the blueberries are smaller than the strawberries. I rolled out a rope and tired to make uniform slices, except a carton of berries doesn't have uniform berries, so when I rolled them out I'd use two or three slices to make one berry.
Here they are ready for the oven. Some artists will dust them lightly with baby powder or corn starch to give them that powdery look when they are fresh, but I skipped that step and will skip the glaze, too.
Most exciting was Allie's House realistic containers: gum blister wraps--but just try finding the bister packs. I got lucky. The strawberries fit nicely in a Dentyne pack. I trimmed a lid and a bottom for the strawberries, but I like the idea of leaving two blisters attached and folding one blister over the the filled blister over to create a more realistic pack. The longer, larger pack was Eclipse Solar Ice and smaller blisters were Dentyne. Next I will scan a package labels, but someone keeps putting them the recycle bin. I will size the labels in a Word document, print, and add to the lids.
Mandrin Orange: Such a simple little project. I use just a two colors: Orange and the same green scrap that I used for the strawberry leaves.
Again I used the real orange to help with the details.
Again size matters. I didn't want to make the orange too large so that it would be confused a naval orange, nor did I want it the size of my strawberry or blueberry. I just guessed. I rolled out a rope then cut 12 slices of equal size to get 12 orange balls.
With the small end of the stylus, I shaped a dimple for the stem end then used the needle tool to shape the wrinkles on both top and bottom, and made s tiny dimple on the bottom and added the wrinkles. I used the needle to add just a dab of green for the bottom of the stem.
To texture the oranges, I rolled them on the blue scrubby, which I like very much instead of pricking the the texture with the needle tool. The Mandrin is slightly flat, so I gently pushed them to flatten them
Cantaloupe: So much fun to make.
Choose a color that you think represents the outer rind then a green that reflects the inner rind, and an orange.
Roll a bit of green until it is very, very thin. If it sticks to the work surface, dab a bit of corn starch on it. Cover an orange sphere with the green, cutting away excess, and working the green until it is smooth and seamlessly covers the melon ball.
Do the same with the outer rind. Joann of Joann's Minis uses the clay roller (the pasta roller) to get ultra thin rind because she wants the green layer to slightly show through the outer layer. I wasn't successful in getting that to happen, perhaps because I didn't roll the final ball over the same surface as she uses. Finally, I used my blue scrubby. You can see her youtube tutorial if you want that same effect. I cut the melon in half then made the dimples.
Using the stylus I shaped a dimple where the seeds would have been using the larger end of the stylus, trying to shape the hollowed out inside after the seeds have been removed. Next, I cut the halves in half and gently pinched the ends together to get a nice curve and used the stylus again to give a better defined seed dimple.
Rhubarb: Not a particularly popular fruit these days, but on the old farms every garden had at least one clump of rhubarb. Here, I'm the only one in the family who likes rhubarb, so I thought I'd try my had at making rhubarb. Visit the link to see details of the tutorial. This artist has great tutorials.
New Tool: Most call it a "pasta maker" which does describe it aptly but not food quality. It did save some the time and work kneading the clay to get colors blended more quickly. I seem to have some arthritis in my thumb and index finger on my right hand, so this little machine will be quite helpful. I can roll out that very thin clay for layers in the canes and maybe one day I will master that fine art of making nice detailed canes.
I grow one hill of rhubarb in the garden and pick it once a season. Most of it I freeze to make a compote or sauce that no one else in the family eats. I enjoy it on toast or even cottage cheese and I like to make a strawberry rhubarb pie for company, as I did last week. It turned out so perfect. The next pie I baked was a cherry pie and it got too brown, so this was good pie. My next project, then will, will be a mini rhubarb pie.
I pulled a few small stocks of rhubarb for my models and blended these colors: these shades or red and translucent white.
I already had the green blended for the grapes that made a while back. I do have a problem with the amount of green and the shade used in the tutorial because the younger stalks don't have all that green, but I followed the tutorial anyway.
The canes are not all the same size, nor are the stalks on the real plant. I deviated from the tutorial again when it shows how to curve the one side that creates a celery shaped stalk, but rhubarb is rounded on top and flat on the bottom is that's how I made mine.
I used the needle tool to texture each slice.
Lemons: I sort of made up my own meme, combining the "make lemonade" with a saying my brother acquired as a student at Colorado School of Mines. All of the engineering students had to take the summer surveying class, so when something didn't go right, the guys said, "Just punt," borrowing the term from football. That is exactly how I got whole lemons. I punted. Nor did the strawberry cane that I tried to create to make sliced strawberries work. I definitely need more practice making canes. I purchased the "pasta roller" just so that I could roll out thin clay for the canes. More practice.
And that's how I came to have 3 lemons. I have more lemon colored clay, so who knows, I may just bag up few more.
And there you have it: a bounty of fresh summer fruit. I'll be making rhubarb pie later this week.
I'm posting all the Youtube videos that I used to create my summer fruits. I don't always follow them exactly and sometimes borrow a technique from one and some from another.
Stay cool.
Thanks for visiting.
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