The Books are here... The Books are here

This week has been pleasantly awesome... I got the books I ordered through Amazon and flipped through them to see what little wonders I can create and bake and show you.  Ummm... well.  I don't really think my first attempt at what appears to be rather simple turned out all that well. 

Huzzah... my Miniature Food book arrived and I'm so excited
to get started on learning the tips and tricks to making realistic food!

I really love how Angie Scarr documents her books.  Makes it very
easy to understand and gives really good pictures on how to make
each and every piece.  It even has layouts to make the small
stands and boxes. 

So I thought I'd try my hand a miniature bread.

Hello... bread.  Sigh... in the Angie Scarr book it was to be a caramel on the top, but when I put it together, it just ended up being rather dark looking in comparison to her's.

Miniature Bread... first attempt

I'm not really loving the french loaves, loaves of bread, bagles and buns

Of course I realize that this is my FIRST attempt at miniature food and following what Angie laid out in her book.  I have to say I really like how she's decribed everything step by step and has really good pictures for us to follow.  I'm thinking when she mentioned caramel... I think I might whiten it up... or even make it thinner.  Maybe my interpretation of wafer thin caramel... wasn't her take on wafer thin, as you can see - I think it's a bit too dark and my french bread got a bit out of control, portion-wise.

My version of "fruit cake"... ummm... minus the fruit :-)

Yes, this is another attempt out of Angie Scarr's book, she made a very beautiful fruit cake, which had poppy seeds in it and some real seeds on the top.  Since I had neither of those types of seeds in my kitchen, I went without the poppy seeds and made some polymer clay looking seeds for the top.  I'm not hating this one... in fact I kind of like how it turned out.  I have come to realize I need to get myself a course sandpaper to help me with my texturing, in this case I used one of my pins to make the little holes.



I'm actually pretty happy with the way this turned out

My attempt at miniature breads

So I've got this book and 3 other books to go through for my polymer clay adventure that this is going to be.  I'm excited.  Lots on miniatures, not so real miniatures for jewelery and a bead book.  I don't know how I'm going to put it all into my extra time (... and where I'm going to find the spare time?!?!) to get things going again as I'm very aware it's been very quite here on the blog!

Pretzels!

I decided to get back into the Polymer Clay Cookbook that I'd picked up a while ago and try my hand at making another little food treat.  This time it was Pretzels!  I think they look pretty good for a first attempt... although I think I have to look for a more brown type of finish to it...not bad but maybe a bit more "cooked" looking may not be a bad thing....

Mmm... Pretzel Charms!

I added some "salt" (small white bits of clay) to them after this shot and I do have to say for a first time it was a pretty good turn out.  I think I'm going to try a bracelet with hotdogs, pretzels, pop, and maybe some other similar foods.  We'll see.
What I'd like to do next is try to make a polymer clay cane.  I have the instructions on how to make an orange cane in the Polymer Clay Cookbook... and I've seen some YouTube videos on it.  I even came across Angie Scarr's website and she has a good little tutorial on how to make some very realistic miniature oranges too.  Now I'm really looking forward for those books I'd ordered to come in, since a couple are by her!

On a completely other note... and totally off topic, I take my pictures with my iPhone 4.  The other day I bought an app called Hipstamatic, which has different old film types and lenses to choose from... and here is the results... old school baby with a gratuituous shot of my cat.

Going Ol' School on this pic of my kitty