WIP items and stuff

I finally photographed some of my RE-Ment. (FYI: RE-Ment is a brand of Japanese mass produced miniatures, so I didn't make these!) I originally took this for the local country show but at the last minute decided not to enter. I didn't think it was good enough to be worth the effort and cost of entering, then paying to go into the show grounds and waiting till the end of the show to collect the photo. So pic goes on Flickr and this blog. It's been a while since I just photographed random toys and it was really quite enjoyable. I really need to start photographing more toys again; set ups are such fun!


This is another thing I was going to enter in the show but didn't.



It was going to be an orange themed tea setting. I was rushing to finish it because the deadline for the show entries was much earlier than I expected, but in the end decided not to enter for the reason above, and also the fact that finishing it on time was stressing me out (I'm not good at making clay items fast) and I had more important things I needed to finish (teaching materials prep).

The yellow cake is supposed to be an orange cheesecake, and the yellow didn't come out as deep as I wanted unfortunately. Maybe it'll be better as a lemon cheesecake? There are also white spots on it; I think they may be air bubbles. :( I made another one before this which has an orange top but I really don't like it.

I plan give the round biscuits and that pile of orange slices a 'dipped in chocolate' look. Right not I'm undecided whether to use acrylic paint or to use liquid clay. The star biscuits will either get a chocolate chip in the middle or something red. Maybe a nut instead? See first la.

I wanted to give those cupcakes a swirl of icing on the top and decided to try the air dry clay + PVA glue trick I found on Atelier Dolie. It didn't work so well for me. Once I think I added too much water and the piped icing wouldn't hold its shape and sank down into a shapeless blob. Next time I tried with less water and it just wouldn't come out of my icing tip. I think that this technique might be more suited to the larger tips used in Sweets Deco than my tiny PME 42C tip.

If anyone has any tips on what to use for piping cream, please let me know. Right now I'm just going to go back to using Josonja's Texture Paste until I can find a better alternative. Tiff of One Dessert Please recommends using Mont Marte Modelling Paste, and I'm going to see if I can find it locally. Hopefully it's a more brilliant white than the off white of my current paste.

I must talk about the little cat shaped cookies in the pic. I used this paper punch for the shape.



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I'm going to have to put a piece of tape over it because the black ink smudges. :( I first saw that punch on Snowfern's blog and immediately fell in love. I mean, what's there not to love--it's a cat with a giant head! Sooooo cuteeee!!! I didn't have much hope of finding it, especially living where I do and I had never seen it on ebay.

I found it on Etsy. I wubs my kitty cat punch <3 Now if I can find the others in this series...the stars and the bunny are too adorable...

I think I've become totally addicted to mini paper punches.

I made this gingerbread house a while back, but never got around to decorating it.



Now I've picked it up again and I'm still wondering what to put on there. Maybe Ihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif'll make it orange themed like everything else I have haha. And the pieces on the side is the chimney. I was rolling it between my fingers and trying to decide how to decorate it when it fell to pieces. Guess cheap superglue is not necessarily the best thing to be using. :P

Oh yeah, I got the plans for the house from Pine Studio, which has many great tutorials. Next time, I'll make my own plans. I like to link to my tutorial sources, I hope it's useful to others reading this blog. :)

Post office update pics and paper punches

I've recently finished the post office shingles. (Done while marathoning Ghost Whisperer season 3 :p Watching that Bloody Mary episode alone in the middle of the night gave me a case of the heebie jeebies. Gah, mirrors! =_=)


I used sandpaper spray painted red and then inexpertly 'weathered' with acrylics. I'm not really sure of the look to be honest, but it sure looks a heck of a lot better with the shingles weathered a bit. It now looks less like paper chicken feathers. I don't know, the unpainted shingles reminded me of chicken feathers for some reason.



I'm now working on the sign and the awning. I've scanned in the original sign and traced it in photoshop. I'm trying to go for a vintage style sign, something with a bit of a Victorian flavour, maybe? I'm having a hard time coming up with something that looks nice, to be honest. Most of what I'm doing now is researching vintage shop signs and looking for photoshop tutorials that will help me do what I want. What I've done at the moment doesn't look any better than the old sign.

On to other news:



I bought these on ebay a week ago and they've just arrived! I've not felt so excited about a purchase for a while XD. They are just lovely. I thought I was going to get a number of repeats of the ones I already have, but upon closer inspection, the punches are actually quite different, they just have the same theme as the others. The new teddy bear punch in particular has wider paws and is larger.

The ebay listing for this set stated that they were about 10 years old, but they look brand new. Some of the punches are a little stiff, but loosen up after a few presses. I tested the bunny punch on some paper and it wasn't always easy to get it to punch through. It works fine on clay though, which is fine by me as that's all I wanted these punches for anyway. Look forward to seeing more cookies! Though, in a 1:12 scale these will be rather large cookies. They'll probably look good enough with Sylvanians though.

I'm really pleased the set included a mini circle shaped punch. I've been looking for a small circular punch for ages! I'm going to start making cupcake liners again, the last ones I did (for the Totoro cream puffs) I drew circles with a felt tipped pen cap and cut them out manually.



And just so they're not left out, here are the punches I got when I was in Brunei (except for the green double punch, I got that in Adelaide). They're what I've been using to make the cookies in my previous posts. I had to put some clear sticky tape across the top as the designs smear when you use the punches, as found out from that girl person punch. Not the best quality overall, but they do what I want.