Bread experiments

I made some bread over the past few days to replace the awful, awful looking baked goods that came with my Sylvanian Village Bakery. I'm not sure I've been entirely successful. I don't really like the look of my bread, but I think that the short loaves in the middle with the little cuts in them look okay. I still haven't been able to make my bread look as realistic as I like. Also, on the right are my attempts at the 'flour dusted loaf'. Er... yeah... not quite a success yet. But I'll keep trying!

My baguettes are also too fat for their height. I admit, I really don't know bread. I grew up just eating supermarket white bread, and the occasional pandan flavoured loaf. Bread just wasn't a big part of my home food life. It wasn't until I came to Australia last year that I saw a bakery with flour dusted loaves. Maybe there were some in Brunei too, but I never really paid much attention, heh. To me bakeries were all about the curry puffs and yam basket pastries.

My chalk pastel tends to rub off the things I make. I had to seal the bread with varnish to make sure nothing would come off and stain the paper on my bakery shelves. I have no idea why, chalk pastel is supposed to bake into the clay and not come off. Someone suggested maybe it was cheap pastels? I don't think so though, because I know of two prominent artists who use the same brands of pastels that I do. I'm starting to wonder if my oven thermometer's lying to me and my oven's still not hot enough. -_- Aiyeeee... I guess for now I'll continue varnishing my minis. At least the pastel can't come off after that.

I posted a review of my Sylvanian School Master's set on the Sylvanian Families forums.



One of my favourite sets! I'm glad I managed to get it from the second round of BeHappy's budget items offer. I'd missed it during the first round.

My favourite items have got to be these:



I mean look at them! Mini flasks and test tubes *squees* I'm going to have to cast the test tubes in resin to see if I can make some with coloured 'chemicals' inside them.

My next favourite item is the chalk box with the individual pieces of chalk.



They fit perfectly on the blackboard of my little mini school XD That bottle on the far right is apparently a bunsen burner. I would have included it in the picture of the test tubes if I had realised. I thought it was ink or correction fluid or something.

New stuff!

I received my nice shiny new PME 42C icing tip in the mail a few days ago. I also bought a couple of others, the teeny round tip in Adelaide and the bigger star tip at a newsagent's. (Of all the things to sell at what is essentially a stationery/book/magazine shop...)




I experimented with the tips and acrylic texture paste a few nights ago and I'm pleased with the tips. They make such pretty patterns! I'm less impressed by my piping skills though. I definitely need more practice. What I wasn't prepared for when using the tips was the absolute mess the texture paste made. I had to use my finger to squeeze out the paste from the piping tips, and if I didn't put enough paste in, nothing would come out, but if I put more, the paste would come out of the top of the tips as well as the bottom when I applied pressure :/ I wish there was some way I could pipe the paste using the tips and a syringe, I find it easier to control the amount of pressure using a syringe, and it'd probably be less messy too...




I also got some new crafting supplies. I'd been looking for a cheap source of microbeads in online, but haven't really found any that satisfied me. On the way back from Adelaide, I found a $3 bag of mixed beads in Go-lo, which is a kind of dollar shop franchise. The smallest beads are about 1mm, yay! No idea if they're glass or plastic though...

I found the stars in another dollar store franchise,and the teeny little stars are about 2mm across. They're like glitter, they stick to everything!

The stuff on the right is fake sugar and fake ice from etsy seller, MiniatureSweet. I figure the sugar would look just about right if I tried to make those yummy danish butter cookies *drools*




Also from MiniatureSweet, I got a bunch of plates, glasses, cutlery and paper doilies. The fruit canes were free gifts. They are all too big for 1:12 scale, and the glasses and bowls are too big even for 1:6. Well, that'll teach me for looking at the sale description and going "That's about right!" without checking the sizes on a ruler.




I got some Oyumaru molding material. I bought it because it looked like it could be a cheaper alternative to silicone. It's a Japanese reusable mold making material, and I'll do a write up about it once I have a chance to try it out. Hopefully within these few days. I also got a cute cupcake eraser as a free gift from the seller :D




And I finally ordered an oven thermometer online after searching all over town for one without success. And wouldn't you know it, the day the thermometer arrives, I find another, smaller one in the local kitchen shop. I'm sure it wasn't there the last few times I checked!

Failed experiments

What I've been up to for the past few weeks: lots of clay experimentation failure :P

From the left: Over cooked lemon canes, a failed attempt at making a bowl (I had made a few more, but I threw those away) an over cooked cake, something that was supposed to be a plate and a pie crust I can't get out of the bottle cap mold.The over baking is due to a misconception of what thickness meant.

Me: Bake for 10mins per cm of thickness. Well, long = same as thick! :D *burns clay and feels dumb*

I've since managed to cook my canes right, and I now know how to slice them without distorting the cane XD I just have to cook it first and then slice it before it cools down completely. Some people refrigerate or freeze their canes, but I've found that it doesn't work for me.

Clay is such a time consuming hobby. And a money consuming one. -_- Always seems to need some other kind of tool to achieve desired effect. Ball tools, brushes, chalk pastels, paint, acrylic texture paste, syringes, pasta machine, molding silicone, two part resin, miniature dishes, etc etc. I ain't rich enough to get all of that! My hands are sore from rolling clay that has become hard due to the cold weather. Ugh, I want a pasta machine...

I've also been working on painting my other dollhouse. It's coming along, slowly!