Fruit and vegetable market stall

Inspired by my miniature baking, I decided to try making other food stuff from polymer clay and, perhaps not surprisingly, chose vegetables. 

I made vegetables a long time ago, when I was a beginner, and I made them from air-drying clay because I thought it was easier. Now I know it isn't, and the results are far better. Air-drying clay dries quickly, it often crumbles after a while, you have to paint it. Having now tried both I clearly prefer fimo.

Back then, I even made a fruit stand that I filled with veggies and fruit, that I was quite happy with at that time. I also made fruit and vegetables for my large Victorian dollhouse and for my retro house (the Tudors didn't eat vegetables). Here are some of my old groceries. 

 

 

Unlike bread and cakes, I didn't attend any classes on making vegetables. (I was enrolled in one that was cancelled because of the current situation). There are zillions of tutorials on YouTube, some more helpful than others, and in the end you just need to decide what suits you best or merge the various techniques according to your tools and skills. I also have several books - yes, physical, printed books - on making fruit and vegetables, not all of them from clay. 

I started with something that felt easy enough and followed one of the tutorials closely, to understand the principles. After you have done that, you can start improving and improvising, but it is important, I believe, to master some basics. A good thing with fimo, unlike air-drying clay, is that it doesn't dry, and you can start all over again as many times as you need. 

I didn't use any sophisticated tools, practically only toothpicks and a blade. I do have a special rolling pin, but you can also use a bottle or a glue tube or anything round and smooth.  

 

So to begin with, I made tomatoes, bell peppers, cabbage and carrots. First rule, that I had already adopted when making bread, is that no commercial clay is quite the colour you can use directly - you need to mix and mix and not compromise. For instance, I should have added more yellow to carrots. You also have to work a lot on texture to make veggies look realistic, and every now and then I had to check my fridge to see, for instance, how exactly bell pepper stalk sat. I had never really considered that every vegetable has a different shape of stalk, or how the indents go in tomatoes and bell peppers, and so on. The cabbage was the most time-consuming, since you had to make 12 separate leaves in three different shades of green, shape them, add texture and carefully layer upon each other. It took me three attempts to feel satisfied. After baking, I applied fimo varnish to peppers, tomatoes and carrots. 

Just to give you a sense of how much better your minis are when you take the time to develop your skills, I took some "Then and Now" pictures.

 

 

The bottom row is cucumbers, and the new ones I made from a tutorial I wasn't very happy with, so I found another one, and you can see the difference.

 

 

For cucumbers and quite a few other veggies I made later, you need to blend two colours of clay to create a smooth, gradual transition. Again, I had never considered that there are no sharp colour borders in nature. Blending is done by folding and rolling out clay until you drop dead. It can be done in a pasta machine if you have one. I don't so I did it all manually. No shortcuts. It took me a long time to understand and then practice, but it makes such a difference. Just look at these leeks.

or radish, or rhubarb.

You cannot get this effect by painting. 

So I went on, from more simple and straightforward veggies to more complicated, learning as I went.

 

 

Cauliflowers were quite demanding, as were broccoli - they had to be assembled one by one; but the patissons were just a joy to make, as were pumpkins. I only used toothpicks for shaping.

 

For pumpkins and patissons, I used chalk pastels before baking, just as with breads, layering from the palest to the darkest. After baking, I used varnish.

Aubergines and butternut squash were easy. 

But for courgettes, that are the same shape, it was necessary first to make a cane of two colours to create stripes. 

 

Artichokes and asparagus were very demanding. First, you had to pre-bake the stalks, then add the teeny tiny leaves one by one. Then paint with pastels before final baking.

Beans and peas were relatively easy, but because they have to be very small if they are in scale with the other veggies, it was exacting work. I used a magnifying glass.

 

Beetroot, fennel and onions needed colour transition again: 

And garlic, in addition to colour transition, also needed to be arranged in a braid. 

For corn on cob, I found a tutorial with a very smart technique using mesh for texture. 

 

Here are some more Then and Now pictures: 

My self-esteem has soared. I now know that I can make anything from polymer clay, it is just a matter of practice - like with everything else. I am not in a hurry and can spend hours on just one vegetable until I am fully satisfied.

Now you may wonder how I am going to display all these vegetables in my little market stall. Come back soon, and I will show you. 

To be continued.

 

Bakery room box, part 2

I concluded my previous post about my bakery room box on a promise to make more bread to fill the shelves. I had great fun making various breads and cakes. I will not describe every item step be step, but my ambition was to make them as realistic as possible. I used pictures of real bread and cakes, and in most cases I employed or developed the methods I learned at a miniature-bread class last year.

Let's start with bread. This is the sourdough bread I made in class.

Making it with an instructor, I learned the basic techniques: how to shape, how to create texture using various tools - not necessarily expensive tools: a toothpick and a tooth brush will serve you well. Then how to paint with chalk pastels for realistic effect. Here for instance we used five different shades, starting with the palest yellow and moving on gradually to the dark brown for the crust.

So when I finally decided to try and make my own breads I used these initial skills, and the rest was imagination and practice. Many years ago I made my first food items from air-drying clay because I thought it was easier. However, with polymer clay such as fimo that I am using now, you have better control over your project, and when baked it won't crumble. Otherwise it is of course a matter of preference.

As I said, I used pictures of various breads from internet, and I wanted some whole loaves while others cut in halves to show the texture.

For wheat breads, I mixed white clay with just a little yellow, scored, went over with a tooth brush, then toothpick and needle. The bread that looks like a bag is a Russian kalach. In the top row it's obviously a French baguette, a challah, another Russian specialty that looks like a large bagel, and some ordinary bagels. Before baking, I painted them with chalk pastels, in some cases adding white on top to look like flour. After baking I varnished the bagels, but not the other breads.

For rye breads, I obviously used dark brown clay, shaped, scored, added texture and a bit of while pastel to imitate flour. It is particularly important to pay a lot of attention to the halves for them to look natural.

I can of course make more bread for variety, but I have little interest in making more than one of each kind - except for the bagels.

For cakes I likewise used internet images, but a couple of cakes I baked full-sized as well. I showed the Swedish "princess cake" in a previous post. The challenge with cakes is that you want to cut some slices to display the inside.

Front row: sponge cake, cheese cake, carrot cake. Back row: "princess cake", Russian Easter cake, marble sponge cake and chocolate roll.

For sponge cake, I mixed white and yellow clay, make a central hole with a piece of round dowel, scored, added texture on the outside, then cut out a slice and worked on the inside. Painted with three or four shades of pastel on top of each other.

For cheese cake I cut a circle of white-and-yellow mix and a circle of white on top of it, and worked on texture; then diluted suitable shade of red with liquid fimo and covered the cake. I made several mistakes with this cake; for instance, I cut the slice after adding the topping, and it ran into the cake and ruined the effect. So in the next attempt I cut the slice first and added topping to it separately. This was a good lesson for the carrot cake where I also cut the slices before adding the icing. You cannot see it in the picture, but there are teeny tiny shavings of orange inside the cake to represent carrots.

The Russian Easter cake, kulich, I actually made some months ago, for Easter. It has this specific shape, and there are raisins inside.

For the marble sponge cake I made two rolls of yellow and brown and twisted them a bit, then worked on outside texture, cut two slices and worked on the inside.

For chocolate roll I rolled out dark brown and white clay, put them on top of each other and rolled up, like you would with a full-size roll cake. Cut off at both ends, then cut two slices and worked with toothpick and needle for texture.

In case you wonder how long it takes to make a cake, if you are a beginner like me, I'd say two-three hours. That's unless you make a big mistake and need to start all over again. In this scale, even a little mistake is usually visible, and it's easier to start again than try to correct.

When it comes to cakes, possibilities are endless, but there is only so much space I have so I think I will stop at least for the time being.

Finally, small breads, tarts and biscuits. I showed cinnamon rolls and hazelnut biscuits in a previous post and I also showed how I made wooden trays.

This display includes iconic Swedish marzipan rolls, croissants, chocolate chip cookies and doughnuts. Making such tiny things takes a lot of patience, but it's fun, and again there is a lot more I could make if I had more space in my shop.

Finally, I could not resist the temptation of making something that every bakery with self-respect would offer: a wedding cake.

This is the only cake I didn't make from fimo, but from three plastic bottle caps that I glued on top of each other - they already have nice texture on the sides. I then made all these paper roses and a few hearts; each rose has three punched layers. A lot of work, but I like the result.

Now that the products were ready, I had to go back to the shop itself and the display.

As with all room boxes and vignettes (and maybe with dollhouses as well), the eternal dilemma is whether to fix the objects or keep them loose in case you want to change or add something. I usually compromise by attaching small things with craft dots that are easy to remove. But in this case I really want all stuff to be loose - at the risk of everything getting messy when I move the box from my workbench to the book shelf where it will stay.

First, I will show the cabinets with bread because it will be hard to take pictures once the counters are in place.

The bottom compartment has two plastic breads I had before; my bread is better, but they can be there,  almost invisible.

It took me ages to make the bagels hang the way I wanted.

Finished project:

Well, a project is never finished, unless it is given away. I may add, change, replace, rearrange. But for now I will view this room box as finished to my satisfaction.