More Miniatures

My sister was bemoaning the lack of magnets on her refrigerator recently.  I decided to leverage my new-found love of miniatures to make some cute (and functional) magnets.

The first completed magnet is The Cake from Portal:

My version isn’t quite the same (missing one whipped cream/cherry, whipped cream is bigger on mine, and I want to find a better solution for the candle in the future), but I’m pretty pleased with the final result!

		Portal Cake Magnet VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Just to prove it’s really a magnet, here it is sticking to my pasta machine:

I didn’t take pictures of the process, but basically what I did was use some crummy old clay for the base of the cake.  The ‘frosting’ is brown clay thinned with TLS, with black ‘craft sand’ mixed in for texture.  (This part took the longest to ponder over, but finally decided on the craft sand.  I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but it turned out quite nicely!)  The cherries are teeny red balls shaped with a pin and ball tool.  The whipped cream is plain white clay that I pressed into Floree mold and lightly pressed into the wet ‘frosting’.

Before I baked the cake, I assembled all the pieces, and poked a hole for the ‘candle’ (which is actually a toothpick painted white).  Oh, btw, I used a cork with a piece of wire on it to anchor the cake while I worked with it…my fingers were getting so messy, I took a que from cake decorating

After the cake baked and cooled, I dabbed glue on the bottom of the painted toothpick and jammed it into the hold in the center.

I ought to have made a hole at the bottom for the magnet to rest in, but after some quality time with a razor blade, I had a little round cavity for the magnet to rest in. 

I cut a circle out of matting board, and used a leather punch to make the divots around the edge (next time, I’ll measure them out, instead of ‘eyeballing’ it!), and painted the board a light tan color.

After the board dried, I just glued it all together with a strong white glue (hopefully is strong enough!), and I’m letting it sit before it goes to live on the fridge!

Desserts!

One of my favorite YouTube "tutorialistas" did a wonderful cake video, and got me craving one of my own!

Using this tutorial, this is what I ended up with…..once again, I’m reminded I need to work on my texturing….hers is so much more delicate and realistic!  Next time, I’m going to try to make the fondant and the filling a little thinner and more delicate as well.  That being said, I’m still pretty proud of my first ‘complicated’ build!

I had a whole bunch of mixed up pink Premo ready to go and no project in mind….that is until I saw another one of GentlemanBunny’s tutorials on Macaron:

Once again, my inexperience shows, but I honestly think I’m improving – this is probably my favorite piece so far!  I tried to follow her instructions to the letter, but I think it’s just a matter of practice.

 

I think I want to make a larger sized macaron jewelry set, as well as a full rainbow of 1:12 macarons!  I’m in love with them!

Chocolate Lover

Of course, I ended up mixing far too much chocolate color for the chocolate chip cookies, but I sort of meant to, since I had in mind to make a chocolate bar!  I used this tutorial as a starting place for my chocolate bars:

I used a metal roll-y texturizer for the ‘writing’ indents, but other than that, I pretty much used this tutorial word-for-word!

I ate a molten chocolate lava cake for dessert the other night, and having delicious chocolate on the brain, I decided I would try to make one!  I think they ended up a touch too small, and a touch on the under-textured side; and the liquid chocolate isn’t quite shiny enough for my taste; but all in all, I’m pretty proud of them!

I did pretty much the same thing as the doughnuts, only rolling them out slightly thicker before forming the hole, and making indents for the chocolate ‘lava’ overflow.

As I was making the little chocolate lava cakes, I decided on the spur of the moment to make a chocolate bundt cake, since I did have so much of the chocolate color!  I mostly just messed around with a ball of clay until it was sort of the right shape, then worked a hole using a ball tool.  I used a needle tool to score the bundt lines, and realized all too late that I should have made the impressions more dramatic, and the sections more rounded.  All well, live and learn, right?  (I think the moral of my last few posts is “Texture More”!)