Over the Silver Moon

"Ikura" From Silica Gel and Coloring Resin Clay

2010-04-19T21:07:00.000+08:00

I opened up the packet of silica gel last night and was feeling brave enough to attempt to color a batch of my own. The packet I obtained from Daiso contained mostly clear gel beads and I used a bit of Tamiya Clear X-27 Red to dye the beads. I poured enough beads to cover one layer of the small sauce cup I was using to dye them and enough paint to just stain a thin layer of the bottom of the cup.

Didn't take any process photos since I was expecting a failure since the paint or the beads may clump or just chip off or it might not stick properly to the gel beads.

I was unexpectedly treated to a surprise after the beads dried.

The gel beads are not all same in size so some are very very tiny, like microbeads, which others are large. I left the clumped beads to dry on their own and then ''unclumped'' these by pressing them between my fingertips. Three to four of the beads broke on impact in fact -- maybe there was some strange reaction between the paint and the beads (I have no idea...) But most of them were nicely and evenly colored. ^^

The other thing I accomplished tonight was to try out a couple of new paint mediums on Grace Clay. Unexpectedly, a few small drops to and fro was able to make these tiny lumps of clay achieve a brilliant and deep, or a light and delicate color. (No - they aren't expensive paints!) I made mostly fruit colored lumps for use in the danishes later.

Wish I had made rainbow colours indeed -- but I will have kind of no use for the blues eh ^^;

Inspiration Danishes

2010-04-18T21:11:00.001+08:00

After an onslaught of danishes by Snowfern, I was inspired to make a load of my own and some other sweet pastries too. These were molded from a couple of 1:6 pastry master molds made with Alley Goop. (I used Re-Ment miniatures to make the base and further modified it since most of the Re-Ment pastries have fruit or frosting on them) It was the first time I am using Alley Goop and I must say - this stuff works much better than the purple x white molding material I got from a Japan-based hobby shop.

The usual round danishes, bear claws, beignets (not exactly a danish but they are good!) and cinnamon swirls. (the clay is air-dry clay, a combination of 2/3 Hearty Soft White and 1/3 Grace Clay. I have used a mixture of ochre and naple yellow watercolors and FolkArt ButterCup Acrylic Paint)

Pastry with a latticed top

Danish Twists.

These would probably be great with any 1:6 scale dolls - probably the child BJDs or end up as mini-pastries if you are using these for a 1:4 or 1:3 doll. I'll get these painted tomorrow after they have dried and shrunk - these things need at least 24 hours of drying before I paint on them!

A Bountiful April! Utensils and Molds!

2010-04-14T23:38:00.002+08:00

Being caught up with RL work, I've put aside miniature making for almost a month as I am simply too tired everyday to try to craft something! But then again, I have not stopped thinking about what projects to create next and have been crawling *evil laugh* about the Net in search of better resources to enhance my hobby experience. At this moment, I must really thank the presence of deputy sellers - and if not for them, I would not have collected so many wonderful tools from all over the world.

A lot of babies came in the mail this week and one of the most precious sets is this set of 1:12 bowl/plate/cups molds that I got off Taiwan's Ruten; a online shops collaboration between PCHome and Ebay. The original maker of these molds can be found here - Bruce Models (his/her website is in Mandarin, you may need a translation program if you do not understand the language)

The molds are around NT295 each (USD 9)and every single one of them is beautifully made. No air bubbles, all the edges are well-defined and the whole thing is perfectly compact. Each mold is individually wrapped and comes with its own instructions in Mandarin. The deep-dish mold comes with its own tiny wooden tool to create indentions. A set of 4 pearls (different sizes!) also comes with the bowl mold and he/she teaches you to make your own ball tools using the pearls and bamboo sticks on the website.

My grubby fingers holding up one of the molds!

Next, I'd like to introduce a certain miniature wholesaler from Hong Kong by the name of Yee Long Pte Ltd. You may or may not have seen / heard of them -- but their products would be something commonly found in many other second-tier sellers or distributors. Their prices are a little steep but for some of the rare items they offer, I am certainly bought over. If you are interested in buying from them, please check the FAQ on their website -- they have a minimum purchase amount.

Some of the 1:12 miniature utensils I bought from Yee Long :

From left to right - oval dishes for dorias and gratins, 4 sets of cutlery, plain tray and partition tray, and black cup and saucer set, with plate.
A lot more other tools came in the post too - including a very neat doll-hair maker tool, perfect to squeezing out miniature spaghetti or ramen, a bottled set of Japanese craft resin and bundles of Farinetta. <3 Deputy Sellers!

Papercraft Patisserie Cafe Work in Progress

2010-03-21T23:34:00.000+08:00

The paper doll-house dioramas from Sanwa Paper Co. caught my eye a long time ago but I just did not conjure up enough patience to sit down and in fact work my way through 14 pages of printed templates to get one done. But I managed to finish half of the patisserie cafe set today.

In the process of attaching the base to the walls. I used tacky glue for the base and realized that was a bad mistake. Because tacky glue is extremely "wet" and takes time to dry. It puckered up the paper and gave it soggy spots.

The rest of the cafe was attached using Beacon's fast-grab glue so no more soggy spots there-after.

Putting the inner cupboard together with glue. This cupboard is a lot of cutting work - especially the curved edges.

The assortment of tools used in this venture - craft knife, pen knife, tweezers, two sets of rulers and a scorer. The basic scrapbooking equipment. :)

Here's a half-completed set-up. There's still more miniature folding to go. But as you can see, the papers that I have used are very strong and it holds up all that ceramic plates and glass, along with the miniature air-dry clay food. More cutting and folding tomorrow!

Miniature Wagashi Box

2010-03-19T12:05:00.001+08:00

I started on the miniature Japanese sweets or wagashi (和菓子) box project last night. The designs are made from traditional wafuu (和風) designs, which are usually of Japanese flowers like the sakura or chrysanthemum, or patterns like arrows and waves.

The box looks easy to fold at first -- even with a modified template but when it comes to cutting through the nooks and corners to make the double-folded sides, I thought I was going to be blind! :)

The purple set is the first finished box. On it are the words - 如月彩さくらもち (Febraury Colours Sakura-mochi) Patterns are all modifed and printed using CS Photoshop. I didn't make any process pictures as I was just too eager to get the box done. Maybe I'll do a process set for the next box in magenta (you can see the templates in the background.)

I think the box is around 2.5cm by 1.5cm for the inner box. Approximately a 1:12 wagashi box.

Filled it up with some of the candied fruit I made a few days ago. I think this definitely needs very tiny wagashi to be placed in it.

I will probably be making more of these boxes with different designs next week. And maybe some little wagashi to place inside.

Misu Donuts and Strawberry Blonde Hair

2010-03-17T12:40:00.000+08:00

Completed the Misu Donuts (fun parody of Mister Donut) project with just a box to fold and some more paper bags to go. These are roughly 1:4 size donuts but I seemed to have gotten the scale of the folded bags wrong -- but anyway, that can be easily corrected.

Here's some more on the tray with a penny for scale.

Julia dons strawberry blonde wavelets today and appears to be waiting for someone to share her Misu Donuts with!

Vacation Projects. Time Check. Hobby Check

2010-03-15T17:01:00.000+08:00

After working hard for two weeks, I finally get a breather! A week of rest - or rather indirect rest (Since I will still have to be finishing up a lot of administration on the side.) Over the past month, I have been making a lot of little parts and wondering how in the world am I going to make use of them -- I suppose they will all be turned into board-magnets and scrapbook embellishments since most of them are ranging between a scale of 1:6 to 1:4.

It's been roughly 3 months since I started working on clay miniatures. The returns have so far been fulfiling. I feel like my time is better abused, I have made a few more friends and I have got myself some pretty resin (aka Miss Julia) to indulge in.
I am hoping to finish up these old fashioned donuts today, along with the cruellers and twisted churro rolls in 1:4 scale and make some paper bags for them.

The other project this week is the CBC Challenge : Waffles. Here's a start-stack that I need to work on. Probably I will be adding some Belgian waffles to the mix.

Little Note :
I have cleared up the materials I bought to start on sewing doll clothing and other accessories for my resin indulgence. They are all snug in my bedroom's shelves now, away from the strong-smelling paints and varnishes are stored in my study (where I work on my miniatures). Miss Julia looks extremely tired after helping to clear away the fabrics for her new dresses and she has plopped onto her armchair with some green tea to relax. I doubt I will be writing about doll matters and sewing forays in this blog. There would most likely be a new one up once I get to it.

Miniature Boxes, Again!

2010-03-06T01:34:00.000+08:00

While still in the craze of making miniature boxes -- I found some more templates through Google Japan and the daunting Japanese blog ranking sites and with a few apt keywords. Today's boxes includes : a cake-box with curved handles and a see-through window, and a tray for you to put your cake on, a roll-cake box, an old-fashioned cookie box with a paper liner and my familiar upright cake-box with a new design.

I caved in and bought myself a proper cutting mat with self-healing properties from Spotlight instead of using the tattered $2 one that I gotten from Daiso. Cheap things don't last I guess. :( The usual tools I use are the same : two craft-knifes with different edged blades, a school penknife, a metal rule, flat and sharp tweezers and manicure scissors.

I have included two more new tools to my miniature box repetoire as well : a wood carving flat-edge and a scrapbooking flattener. The wood carving tool (get one with a flat or slightly slanted edge) is used to mark and score the folds on the boxes, making folding a *lot* more easier. The scrapbooking flattener does as it says -- flatten folds.

Instead of tacky glue, this round I used Beacon's 3 in 1 Advanced Craft Glue. It is, according to its label - fast-dry, instant grab and dries clear. It is great for grabbing those small slips and corners of your boxes and getting them to stick together within a second. The only tacky part (forgive the pun) about this glue is that it is fast-dry and once it goes into drying, the glue stretches into thin strands much like super-glue. At times, because of pressure, the glue may rise upwards to the opening and "bubbles" over.

Which makes it very irritating to handle. The trick I used with this glue was to make a very tiny hole for its opening and capping it away when I put it down -- so you don't get strands or bubbles.

So here we go: the three boxes made today - and I placed some of the miniature choux cremes and swan cream puffs on the cake box's pull-out tray. The blue box in the second photograph was made a few days ago -- its a very simplistic folded box with a napkin liner. I filled it with some cookies that were made for the February project. A US penny is placed for scale.

Cream Clay Piping Practice and Icing Tips

2010-02-27T00:57:00.003+08:00

Did a little piping practice today. I had failed a lot previously with piping when I was using plastic nozzles. I wasn't very good either with the sillicon deco tube either -- plastic nozzles were hard to handle. With that in mind, I headed off to our local baking supplies shop and grabbed the tiniest Wilton icing tips available, which are coincidentally metal.

Miniature piping bags can be hand-made using small plastic sachets and curling a stretch of "foil teeth" from a aluminium foil or plastic wrap box. Yoyo Studio's tutorial is one of the more well-known ones to teach clay cream piping.

The difference between hand-made nozzles for miniatures and icing tips is simply -- clay wastage. Icing tips are larger and you will have a bit of clay left over after finishing whatever you have in the bag. For the miniature foil nozzles, you reduce on clay wastage.

If you aren't that nit-picky on the clay and if you're fat-fingered like I am who can't curl a length of foil teeth for nuts, just stock up on Wilton icing tips with the smallest number for the series.

These were done with a Wilton Open Star Tip 13 and a normal plastic piping bag which I cut into half since I didn't need such a big bag. Make sure you tape the plastic bag to your icing tip as it can move and mess up your piping. You probably can get a vague idea of the tip-size with this link. I used pure Grace Soft White Cream Clay. If you are not sure how to handle a piping-bag, Google turns up a few good tutorials like 1M Swirl Cupcake Icing tutorial one on Wilton's own site.

You can also make a soft cream-like clay that can be piped easily by soaking pieces of air-dry clay in water along with talcum powder. Use enough water to soften the clay to a mushy texture but don't over-soak it else you will take a very long time to get it back to a drier state. Use acrylic colors to mix in if you want to get an opaque feel to your prepared cream.

More pictures of what I did with the rest of the cream clay. I worked with a few methods of swirling on the cupcakes made a few days ago.

Piped some cream into a few raw-looking tartlet bases. The metal tip makes it very easy to use. If you have been attempting with plastic icing tips, the tip will not be able to 'cut' and release the clay well. The larger piping bag is easy to hold and use for people with a not too steady grip. :)

The Madness about the Swan Cream Puff

2010-02-23T22:03:00.000+08:00

I joined in Snowfern and Asuka's madness with the swan cream puffs and tried to make my own. Everything was quite simple to do and fix until it came to (1) coloring and (2) making the heads of the swans.

(1) being that my cream puff bases kept falling into the coloring pit of horror and I ended up with a few that can't be used. :(

(2) the heads are really tough to make! I think my fingers were sprained by the time I was trying to twist the heads into an S-shape. Finally I gave up and just made a C. So the swans look like ducks instead of swans. :o

Anyway :

Puff-bases from vanilla-based air dry clay. This is pure Grace clay. I simply refuse to use Hearty-Soft since it does not agree with the molds I use. This time, instead of the usual opaque acrylics I use, I colored using a mixture of water varnish for wood surfaces and Tamiya clear acrylics.

They look a little like Japanese soy-sauce crackers on second look - but I am still pleased with the results. These are not varnished yet, so after varnishing, they would be less soy-sauce shiny? :0

Finally got these three assembled after like 30 minutes of struggling with the cream and wings. I had to glue the wings of the smallest one to the cream, else it kept falling off. Then I realized I have a lot more swans to assemble... so I think I'll leave those to tomorrow.

View from the top - the larger swan on the blue plate appears to have an elongated cream butt-tail, now that I look closer at it.

My largest swan - you can see the 'C' neck instead of the 'S' neck.

With a penny for scale for you to gauge the size of these three. :)

And finally, my messy work-top with lots more puffs to assemble.

Till the next crazy CBC challenge! Onwards, girls!

PS: Have a look at Asuka's and Snowfern's swans at their blogs.

Miniature Pastry Boxes

2010-02-19T21:47:00.001+08:00

I was debating quite hard on the packaging material for my completed French sweets and was not too happy with just plain cellophane wrapping. I wanted pastry boxes in miniature so I could stuff them all with these sweets, and most importantly, it will look good!

It took me literally a week or so to source out all the bases of the boxes I wanted to make and have them saved up. I found a ton of really nice templates from Mirkwood Designs (a very popular and well-known site, I was told) and Mel Stampz (another wonderful website for papercraft projects with loads of ideas and templates).

I sourced out photoshop brushes if you are using Adobe Photoshop like I do to design the boxes -- you can find tons of these just by googling for photoshop brushes.

These sheets are printed on 190gm2 matte photopaper and 170gm2 glossy photopaper. I use a Canon Pixma MP550 series photo-printer. Likewisely, you can also bring these to a print-shop or Kinkos if you do not own a photo-printer at home.

I used a variety of pens and scissors to cut out the box itself . Since it is that small, cuticle scissors does the trick around the corners and a very sharp, small-nibbed craft knife is recommended for this. A pair of clean pinchers does the trick of pulling away stray bits of paper too small for your fingers to nip.

I scored the box's folding guide-lines using my craft-knife. The craft-pen (in blue) has a pretty good side for scoring, and it is smooth plastic too.

All scored and ready to be glued and folded.

Use tacky glue above everything else since your usual glue-stick or runny glue is not going to work here - the project will fall apart if you used the former, and the latter will just wetten all the printing (which, beware, is not waterproof)

And all glued up. Hold onto it for a few moments to let the glue semi-dry.

And it's ready to hold some of the sweets! Not exactly the best photo since I didn't get this set up in my mini photo-studio but you get the idea.

Time to fold more boxes! :)

Liquid Sukerukun Clay, Part Deux

2010-02-14T11:19:00.002+08:00

Snowfern blogged about Over the Silver Moon on her blog and it made me blush a good bit from the way she has written about my endeavours. Thank you, friend! <3

Now onwards to the Liquid Sukerukun experiments.

From my earlier post about the liquid sukerukun clay experiments, I was still rather worried that I got scammed into buying a pot of white craft glue. So I kept a constant watch over these donut babies and here they are on the second day after getting frosted. I have sealed each one with Folkart's Satin glaze and there's no super crinkly shrinkage like what white craft glue would do.

I am going to try the liquid Sukerukun with watercolors and oil paints next to see what other kind of effects it will bring since the liquid dries to a transcluent and almost transparent finish if you do it thinly. This is infact quite exciting! :)

* I have decided to drop in a small tag for experiments and once I'm back from the whole Chinese New Year work-out, time to spruce up and clean the blog a little.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone and Happy Valentine's Day! (A little attempt by me below to make tiny pink-frosted heart cookies with some funky decoration job on it... >_<)

Liquid Sukerukun and Coating Donuts

2010-02-10T21:46:00.001+08:00

Guess what the postman brought today from A-Smart Shop. Texture sheets, two bottles of mold putty, liquid sukerukun and the A&B epoxy.

The first thing I opened was the liquid sukerukun. On it the Japanese label reads "Liquid Sukerukun" and "Water-Soluble". Behind is a wall of text about how it dries to a transparent/lucent finish etc etc. The inside of the whole bottle smelt suspiciously like white glue and behaved it like too.

Did I just pay like more than $10USD for a bottle of white glue? It sure does look like it. But the shop classified it under Air-Dry Clay. I dragged a couple of unmixed sukeru-liquid over a test piece of cookie. It dried and looked like a strip of transparent dried glue. The next thing I did was to mix acrylic paint into some of the liquid - about a small spoonful of Americana's French Vanilla.

It was very liquid-y at first, really like white glue. After exposure to air, it started gaining a bit more texture and form, and felt heavier to work with. But it does not lose its ''creaminess" and dry up like air-dry clay mixed with water.

Which is a horror to work with each time. I have to keep all my frosting trays well-watered and stashed away in plastic bags else it is back to square one to soak and wetten them. Maybe this Suke-ru-liquid thing is the solution to air-dry clay frosting, then again the liquid is not cheap. I ended up using my experiment to glaze some donuts. So now I have a black and white donut collection :

Photo in a Studio

2010-02-09T19:35:00.000+08:00

It so happens that I take a lot of shots at night of works in progress and relying on just my overhead lamp gives every photo I take a horrible edge-y glare. So I purchased a photo in a studio set using some of the birthday money hubby sent over -- well paid for a bit of it, so that I can dump a bit of investment into macro-photography. Costs around $100+ SGD with shipping thrown in.

I set it on top of the large cabinet perpendicular to the study wall. The lamps get very hot every time I did at least a 10 minutes plus shot - and I nearly fried a finger because I touched the casing near the bulb. I am stll kind of newbish at setting up the lighting and whatnot, but the nub shot I took of some of my miniatures tonight turned out alright :

Very-large madeleines, 2cm in length and a bowl of small strawberries.

ありがとう Sachi-さん

2010-02-03T16:15:00.002+08:00

I visited Sachi-san's blog today and was pleased to see a wee section of her blog entry dedicated to Over the Silver Moon. <3

Thank you very much, Sachi for the link exchange. :)

Do pop by Sachi-san's blog, she's so detailed at making 1:12 miniatures and some of her entries provide a fair bit of tutorial as to doing other miniature products than just with clay.
リンクさせてありがとう Sachi-さん

February's Work in Progress

2010-02-02T20:21:00.001+08:00

This month, I am still working on a large array of French-style sweets and pastries. The amount of work put in to these tiny things is so immense. Apart from just working clay alone, it hit me that miniature making is not just about clay. I guess I was a tad too naive and did not realize that this hobby would carve a huge hole in the melon for me. Here's a brief scan of what I have so far :

Anyway, I did chocolate-stripped strawberries in dark and white chocolate and after finishing with it, I realized that the bag I used for piping had too big a hole and so it made huge flat stripes instead of the frilly thin ones I would had liked.

Looks more like zebra-berry, than something romantic. *sigh*

The choux cream puffs are also part of the selection of simple French sweets in my list to do for this month. Soon to be assembled and dusted with sugar and chocolate.

Guess what came in the mail

2010-02-02T19:48:00.000+08:00

The porcelain dinnerware set I bidded for in ebay!

I went to pick up from the P.O. today finally, not too sure what items were delivered to my apartment last week and no one was around to sign for it.

They came protected in bubble-wrap and with another protective plastic cap on-top. All the plates are sitting in a fake-velvet casing. They look like a set of miniature Corning Ware XD.

The dinner set without the protective plastic cap.

I took out some of the plates for a close-up shot. My overhead lamp is kind of bright and it's taken at night so the quality might just look a little different.

Here's one of the round flower plates with some miniature cookies on it for scale. (My palm does look awfully wrinkled. :()

Anyway, I'm postively glad none of the items were broken after their long trip here!

After Soy'B

2010-01-30T22:15:00.001+08:00

Over the Moon shop-front. Could only take this pic and then it was business-time! Ugh! Forgot to bring book-ends and the books kept falling over each other. But I managed to clear off half my cache! And my sister decided we should rename our second-hand books shop as S-books, or Satsugai Books!

Came back from Soy'B and tired! :)

Glad I met up with Snowfern and Asuka! Asuka is soooooooo (new nickname for her only Snowfern and myself know, hahaha)

Finally there's time to concentrate on the loads of sweets bases I have been making for the Etsy shop opening -- as well as a set of foods for my newly adopted children! (Chun's babies) as well as Lian's Nuah Korkor!

Sachi-san, if you are reading this blog again, I will reply your email soon. I have been very busy! :(
Sachi-san, 最近とても忙しいです。私はすぐにメールの返信されます! >.<

Strawberries and Cream

2010-01-23T11:35:00.000+08:00

I usually spend the early part of the day or the later part of the night making creams and frosting in little sauce boxes used by sushi stores for their soy sauce. The colors for all the creams are mixed by hand and mostly, again eye-balled with a reference pic somewhere. It gets hard sometimes when the color you want isn't there!

So anyway.

Here's the row of pink and red frosting done for the Valentine's Day project.

(You can also see how tight my workspace is, I really need to buy that trolley we were discussing this morning too! (Asuka has one *jealous*) Colors are based from Folkart Acrylics, just about the cheapest bottles of A-paints I can find here and with the largest range.

Recently there has been a strawberry craze by someone, and I ended up putting together some last night too. You can see a peep of them in the same photograph on top.

The strawberry family. Once I varnish these and seal, they get a nice little dip. I'll take more photographs of that later!

Weekend. Time to head out for some retail therapy and run errands. :)

Packing the Goods

2010-01-20T23:11:00.000+08:00

Today was a long day at work. But I managed to get a bit of time to fix the magnet strips to the rest of the tartlet bases. The flexible magnet strip can be found at Daiso Singapore for $2 a piece. And the beauty of it is it has grid lines for you to follow so you will not cut out of line or shape. These are around the size of a SG50c coin.

I'm not sure how much the people are going to sell it for. Since everything's donated, I'll just not think about it! The bottom is painted and varnished balsa-wood, the kind that is used to make model airplanes. It is light enough with air-dry clay so a magnet strip works well. A bulky round magnet behind would just make the whole piece look rough :(

Bagged and packed! :)

I tossed my crappy tea-cups and my equally crappish macaroons onto the plates and fixed them to the balsa-serving boards to be made into magnets. I have no idea if these will sell but since there's only four of them, at least the disappointment won't be so terrible!

Packed and bagged too! Just no picture for now. So the bazaar items have been cleared. *whoosh* Now to start looking at the list of things to do for Valentine's Day. :)

A New Toy and Bazaar Stuff

2010-01-17T21:55:00.000+08:00

Eversince I got the Padico Color Chart and Clayscale, I wanted to try it bad -- so since weekend is clay crafting weekend and produce buying, so I headed over to LC and got the set of Grace Colored Clay just specially for this. So, good-bye to paint-stained hands for a bit.

I am done with the cookie (magnet) bars for the March bazaar. Just wondering if they would hold out on the colors before March. No profits will be made though, I'll be donating these and the rest of the fruit tart magnets as well to charity. (That should get me some good karma for this year! tee-hee)

The bar is 5cm in length, the cookies are roughly 2cm in width, probably on a 1:6 scale. Three sit on a painted balsa wood bar which is also varnished - so you don't have to worry about wood rot!

The strip magnet has adhesive on it already. It was cut from a larger piece using scissors. All the bars have strip magnets. I'm definitely thinking I need to put a warning on these that they aren't too strong magnets and shouldn't be used to pinning up too heavy a piece of paper. The fruit tartlet ones should be having the stronger magnets once I get them next week.

Bagged and packed!

My First Macaroons

2010-01-16T13:39:00.000+08:00

I've finished over the week, the parts needed for assembling mini-sweets themed stationery items for a charity bazaar in early March (I think). The variety includes a bunch of cookies, frosted, jam-med; two kinds of tarts; blueberry and strawberry with cream, and a couple of macaroons which was supposed to be a mistake but it worked anyway.

They became my first macaroons. *hah*

They were supposed to be pink frosting for another batch of five cookies and it ended up that the light red Grace I saved dried to a partially-plastic consistency. So I added more wet Grace, mushed it up, added some more pink and made macaroons. They still look very rough-y around the edges, probably the fact being my poking tool isn't thin enough and the clay was hardening by the second! I'm still not good with sizes yet and most of the macaroons are eyeballed -- so most of them range around 1cm in width.

I will attempt another round of macaroons again when I pop out a new batch of Grace. :)

These tarts are not to doll-house sizes. They look slightly exaggerated due to the fact they are going to be stationery products -- like what I mentioned above. I am assuming many people would buy something that looks pretty and is useful, rather than it just looks pretty; unless they are a miniature collector.

Time to head out since it's Saturday, and go about the craft shops to get some produce. :)~

Props, Boxes and Tin-Cans

2010-01-15T20:21:00.000+08:00

As I continue along my clay crafting journey, I became, in fact, very interested in the peripherals that make clay food art "come to live", or so-called the props to be used - ceramics, baskets, cups, plates, cutlery, serving trays -- Oh you name it and it's all out there.
It led me to scouring out a few deputy purchasers to help me get some of these goods since I have been munching my way through a lot of Japanese sites on Rakuten, Japan Auctions and non-affliated places within Japan itself and Hong Kong. (The latter site inflated its prices very badly and tries to explain why its prices are so high because every other site's products are 'pirated' -- Made me laugh!)

I wouldn't be surprised if I end up being a props supplier rather than a clay food artist. ^0^ Psst, I better not be.

Happy Note of the Day

Emailed Sachi-san today. Oh she replied! Said she was extremely happy to get an 'overseas email' and it was her first time getting it. She used some interesting techniques in her food artistry which I am rather keen to understand how she did it.

Anyway, Sachi-san's website : http://sachi2007.web.fc2.com/ and her blog http://lighthouse.blog.so-net.ne.jp/

Weekend. Finally! Time to finish up the goods I promised for a charity bazaar.

Present from Floree

2010-01-12T20:41:00.001+08:00

Received my package from Floree today, courtesy of a commission seller. I'm still looking for a cheaper handler; this one's kind of expensive but its very reliable.

Was very pleased to find a tiny sachet attached to my items, and on it; labelled "Present"! I love free gifts *cackle*

It's fake coconut powder! It can't pass off as white chocolate shavings because of the white-ness of it. So I'll have to figure out some foods that uses coconut powder. I never knew Floree carried such products. Coconut is definitely not Japanese!

Weekend Prep

2010-01-11T00:34:00.000+08:00

I spent the Sunday working on prep items eventually for the cookies and tart bases that I have made on Friday night. Since air-dry clay requires, *cough* air-drying -- I have to wait for one to two days of open air drying before the creations are dry enough to be painted.

I didn't bother to paint the larger strawberries I made, those I will do over the week to make chocolate-dipped strawberries. Instead I painted the smaller ones that will go into the tartlettes. Those green things you see in the blurred background are .... slices of kiwi fruit! But I think I made them a tad too thick, they look odd after painting. *sigh*

Apart from strawberries, I made a mountain of blueberries. Not exactly mountain, but you get the idea :

The other tart decoration I have made are gold-flecked chocolate slices. Rolled out Grace Clay dries into a consistency like flexible plastic and it cuts quite easily too with a sharp art cutter.

This slab of chocolate was dried out on a plastic sheet the night before. I use a stencil brush to dab gold acrylic over lightly.

Here's the result. Let the paint dry; usually it is quick and then you can start cutting into squares, circles, ovals, whatever pleases you.

As for the cookies that I have showed you in the other post on Wood Formo, I have painted them - these will dry overnight again so they reach maximum shrinkage, and then decorated.

Article on Ms Vickie Lee, owner of Craft It All

2010-01-09T14:49:00.000+08:00

Since work has taken up the whole week and I have forgotten my mandate to at least blog something every day or every two days, I am trying to make up for it. (Looking at my list of what I have to write about - *coughh*)

I have always been an admirer of entrepreneurs and people who dare take the risk for their passion and do something right out of it. I mean I have tried to dabble into the world of entrepreneurship for, say eh, 8 years or more? But most of the projects never lasted too long well, maybe past a year or three years or so. I blame my poor attention level for it.

Plus, I hold a full-time job that chucks a partial amount of my salary into CPF. And the baseline being if you have that CPF, you can't be engaging yourself in any other self-employment such as owning a shop, owning a registered business or anything else. But you're fine with just hobbies.

But anyway - enough blabbering about my own situation. Remember the shop at Liang Court where I found the Hearty-Soft? The owner, Vickie Lee, actually had an article written about her in Jobs Recruited, so to share, go to this link - Crafting it Herself

I have to thank her for bringing in all that clay from Japan, else I would never had gotten started. :)

For the Mold Enthusiast - Floree Japan

2010-01-09T14:15:00.000+08:00

Although clay molds are perhaps seen as a naughty short-cut in the crafting community, I do like my molds if there's a need to do mass-crafting. Molds are like time-savers to air-dry clay users, like canes are to polymer clay users I guess! :D

Since I am not a fan of mixing sillcones to do my own molds, I would try to get the air dry clay / deco craft molds made by Floree Japan, which sadly has become the objects of boot-legging by many Etsy sellers (Some of whom I have mistakenly bought from.)

If you search Etsy's with the term 'clay mold', you'll get an array of blue-silicon copycat molds, fake Floree molds priced anywhere from $5 to $10 USD and the real Floree molds. So far, I have found only two sellers on Etsy selling the real thing which they priced at $15-$19+ USD, the former shipping these molds directly from Japan itself. You can also go through a commission seller to purchase your molds off Floree's Yahoo-auction website and have them shipped to you. Floree molds cost 980 yen per mold (around 10USD), and sometimes there is special discounts. I got my first two Florees from Tokyu Hands in Shibuya, Japan last year.

The fake ones are labelled "f-style" on the side and do not have Floree's distinctive watermark behind, which bears the mold's name and the website. The boot-leg ones are not sanded properly on the side, resulting in a lop-sided mold that cannot lie flat. Also, the inside of the molds are not shiny and smooth so clay takes a while to be removed from it. These probably go for like half the price of a real Floree mold.

Real Floree molds are made either from hard white silicon or black silicon. There's no difference between the two except you see stains on the white mold instead. The black will stain too, just that you can't see it. The front of each mold is stamped with the word 'floree'. Each mold has a distinctive watermark behind, like a company logo-thing - bearing the mold's name and Floree's website. The inside of the molds are smooth and shiny, clay comes out easily with these molds.

You can visit Floree's website to look at their products :

http://www.floree.jp/ - Main website, home
http://www.floree.jp/web1/ - Product Overview, first tab on the side-bar
http://store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp/floree/index.html - Floree's Yahoo Shopping Store, this is where you go if you want to buy molds and crafting materials, second tab
http://www.floree.jp/Les/ - Video Lessons on how to use Floree Molds to make deco and miniatures, third tab
http://www.floree.jp/gallery/index.html - Photograph Gallery of Products, fourth tab
http://ameblo.jp/floree/ - Floree Store Blog, fifth tab
http://www.floree.jp/kyoushi/index.html - Contact Lists, Japan only, sixth tab

Floree's website is very exciting to visit, do take a look when you are free. :)

Note : I am not putting up pictures of the molds that I have purchased but I would be glad to tell you who are the sellers for non-bootleg or bootleg Floree's if you are interested in buying.

Graham Cookie Crust with Padico's Wood Formo

2010-01-08T13:30:00.000+08:00

A french tart / graham cookie dough-like clay can usually be achieved by adding ground bits of dark brown spices, e.g. ground cloves, allspice or black pepper to a pre-colored clay. But with that comes the pungent spice-y scents too, that does not, sadly exist in real cookies and tart crusts!

You can get around that by using Wood Formo; a kind of air dry clay product by Padico. Wood Formo is usually used for model-crafting and sculpting. It is very very moist, so moist that it produces water vapor within the package when the weather gets a bit warmer. :\

Mix around 1/5 of Wood Formo with 2/5 of Grace Clay and 2/5 of Hearty Soft, white-base. If you want a darker brown clay, omit the hearty soft, and use 1/3 Wood Formo and 2/3 Grace. Wood Formo by itself dries up to look like, well, you guess it! So you wouldn't want a woody looking cookie or tart base.

Wood Formo + Grace Clay

Wood Formo + Grace Clay + Hearty-Soft

It is still very sticky to work with, and most likely you will end up getting strands of rebellious clay all over your fingers. Once you get the consistency and color you want, "ball" the clay into your palm and use your palms to fold and round it up. Avoid touching your clay-ed fingers to it and after which just wash and scrub all the residue on your fingers. It's best to allow the lump to stand outside for a while to let the moisture dry off so its workable - but not too long!

A range of cookies made from the mixed Wood Formo clay. Let dry for a day or overnight on plastic sheets. Make sure you flip the cookies to let the bottom dry as well. Moisture tends to collect a lot at the bottom of these. I will probably have a post on coloring these once they have dried. :)

Attempting Cookies 101

2010-01-04T21:40:00.001+08:00

I was browsing through another new Japanese food-claycraft site and totally racked my brains trying to think how these people managed to make cookies in a soft baked vanilla like color.

I had a lump of left-over Grace clay and decided to cut some mini-cookies from them.

Ran a old toothbrush over the top of these cookies for cookie texture. And after they dried, I dabbed them with a wash of orange acrylic; tangerine to be exact. Once that dried, it was decorating and varnishing.

Still trying to figure what to do with them since they are just test pieces, but it turned out pretty well, I say!

I dug out some clear acrylic squares and tried to see if I can get a shot of these cookies in some sort of better arrangement. :) Got these squares from a scrapbooking store. It was like $26 SGD for a pack of maybe 30 different sizes of squares and rectangles.

Pastry Magnets - Delicious?

2010-01-04T21:24:00.000+08:00

I thought assembling the cookies without a reference would be a cinch since I watch that many cooking programmes. But it came to really getting down at it, I was at a loss of imagination! And well they didn't turn out too badly, I suppose.

I topped the cookie base with Grace Resin Cream Clay. Managed to stuff a bit into a pastry bag and used a plastic nozzle to pipe it all around the base. I couldn't take pictures of the process since my hands were so sticky with the cream clay. It sticks so terribly; think of it as very melted marshmallow that will not set! I wasn't sure about whether it was the temperature and humidity of that day, the cream clay was so sticky that I could not form proper cream blobs. So I gave up and just whirled in the cream onto every cookie base using an orange stick.

(Makes mental note to try in an air-conditioned room next time. *sigh*)

Raspberries, chopped nuts and strawberries went on the cream-topped cookie bases and after they dried, I dribbled each with some window-glass paint, that dried up to form caramel and chocolate drizzles.

Once that's dried, I varnished it - and slapped some round stick-on magnets to their backs.

Now they are on the metal cupboard at my workplace, looking pretty and holding up documents! ^^

NB : Plaid's Gallery Glass window color in Amber makes very rich caramel drizzles. You need to let it dry for a day and you'll be rewarded with this gleaming toffee caramel glaze.

Berries and Almonds

2010-01-02T12:07:00.000+08:00

Worked with Grace Clay for the first time. It has a lovely, pale-white translucent color and very easy on the hands to mold until -- you add acrylic colors to it; then it turns mushy and almost to the texture of melted marshmallow. Terrible to mix but if you continue at it, you will be rewarded with wonderful results. Then you have to work quickly as Grace Clay tends towards fast loss of moisture and end up having a texture of drying paper clay. Made a couple of raspberries and almonds using Grace; as well as strawberry leaves and slices.

I managed to finish up all the rest of the Hearty Soft clay, the last bit of tea-brown was used to make tiny eclairs. I used a mold from a used "Panadol" pack to press out the eclairs and texture it.

Next to figure out how to arrange all the fruits and nuts onto the cookies. I will probably be making a few chocolate slices too.

Blueberry Tartlette and Cream Donuts, and New Year WIP

2009-12-30T21:43:00.000+08:00

Completed the tartlettes and donuts I set out to make over the X'mas and Boxing Day stretch. They don't really look like anything sold in shops or really adhere to the real items though. After some deep thought, I realized I liked Deco-style more rather than making miniatures look like the real thing -- although that's a challenge to do, but I would like to create pretty gifts too.

Blueberry Tartlettes and donuts selection.

So, New Year's work in progress :

Sand-cookies; strawberries and you've guessed it, lots of whip cream to come.

Another Store to get your supplies

2009-12-30T14:05:00.001+08:00

Despite the doubts floating about the crafting community (which I am a very quiet lurker) about it being tough to obtain Hearty Soft or Modena Clay, this shop on the second level of Liang Court River Valley, near to the Okonomiyaki restaurant has generous stocks of Japanese and Korean-import clay. I bought 2 bags of Grace Clay for $19.30 each, $3-$4 more expensive than what I would had purchased in Tokyu Hands for; but minus shipping costs and such, sweet deal. They also have a couple of rare clays like Silk or Angel; and they stock a large variety of cream sillicones and sauce-clays for sweets deco or food miniature making.

Apart from clay, this shop also sells cutters, molds and every other thing you would need for a clay craft hobby. However, beware their white sillicone molds are $30.00 each! Hefty price for something I paid 980 yen for. I kind of chuckled when I saw the price and decided not to burn my money into that one. Cutters are expensive too. I'll stick to my straws.

Here is the store's website : http://www.craft-it-yourself.com/about_us.html

Deco Sweets Whip Cream Clay

2009-12-28T18:52:00.001+08:00

The shop Beadtles in Plaza Singapura stocks a small quantity of Deco Sweets Whip Cream Clay if you are thinking of purchasing some from the net and do not have a credit card handy for any e-bay or paypal purchases. They go for around $15-17 per tube; almost the same as what you would pay for in yen in craftstores in Japan.Have fun shopping!

Christmas Day Works in Progress

2009-12-26T03:14:00.000+08:00

Opened up a small pack of white Hearty Soft that I purchased in Tokyu Hands on Christmas Eve. The last time I've worked with clay was ten years ago, when I was making doll figurines using La Doll. Air-dry clay feels strange to handle for the first time, almost a little out-of-control feel since it is so light and mushy. After a while of conditioning it and getting used to the texture, it became fine to handle.

Hearty Soft took well to acrylic paints, I used Daler-Rowney for now since they had a new savers pack of 12 colors for $8.99. You can get it at Art Friends, Singapore. But since H.S. is a white-based clay, the colors that were mixed in becomes pastel-macaroon light, so you have to darken it with additional paints and pastels. I would try mixing in Folkart Acrylic paints and see how the color goes next time.

I managed to turn out a couple of doughnuts and some tarts. Decided to also make some blueberries, leaves, white and dark chocolate flowers as well as vanilla and caramel buttons to go along with the pastries.

Not too bad for a starter attempt at air-dry clay, I guess.

Building your Arsenal I - Straws

2009-12-25T16:36:00.000+08:00

Tools are a very important part of your arsenal as a clay artist. But don't be spending a bomb on commercial tools when there are equally useful and cheap (and free!) ones in your own kitchen or local mall.

Straws are one of the most useful tools of all. Coming in different shapes and sizes, these little goddesses can cut everything into mini-cookies, macaroons and omelettes, strawberry slices and bananas. Don't buy a large pack of straws from your local store and have only use for one or two, it's a huge waste of money, ack!

Get straws free from your local MacDonalds - and ever since Singapore's Micky D have the self-serve section, just take a few more some straws, collect some of the sauce dishes too, they are just the right size to put your left over bits on; when you are there for eats. Other places where you can collect more straws include bubble tea stations for big straws such as KOI - ask them for an extra straw if you don't want to save and wash the one you were drinking from. Grab purple straws from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf outlets and Starbucks too. Save your straws from Vitagen or Yakult packs, those tiny straws pack a few mean chocolate button punches.

Nendoroid Fun 001

2009-12-23T22:04:00.001+08:00

Posed the Kuroshitsuji nendoroid Sebastian with a Re-Ment Luxury French Set; I purchased this set especially for posing dioramas with Sebastian. Can't wait for Ciel Phantomhive to come so we can do more of these dioramas.

Craft Purchases in Tokyo

2009-12-23T20:30:00.005+08:00

Japanese clay craft books are wonderful in the sense that they provide visuals of the tools and products you need for your work. Armed with this, I ran the floors of Tokyu Hands in Shibuya to find the basic materials needed to kick-start claycrafting.

A new set of plastic tools, molds, plastic press and roller. I realized I may need a pasta roller in the near future and a dedicated oven but for now since I am using air-dry clay, the oven is not needed.

Other tools I would need would probably be a few tweezers and tongs, water-based glue, Tamiya paints, glasscraft and acrylic paints, and as well a set of non-oil pastel sticks. Throw in some tiny brushes as well, sponges and eyeshadow sticks, Q-tips and a proper craft-box for them all. (Daiso is a good place to grab all these.)

Bought the first load of air-dry clay as well. I went for the Hearty-Soft brand since it is something that you cannot find in Singapore, whereas Modena and Grace brands, as well as Fimo are readily available.

Found the transparent clay in Volks Showroom in Akihabara. It was expensive! 1480Y or around more than SG$20 for a very small slab. I also managed to get a bottle of Paste Clay and a tube of Grace cream clay.

Despite the great amount of references and tutorials you can find online, I still like a book or two with step by step photographs of how certain looks and effects are achieved. The English craftbooks were purchased off Amazon and the Japanese ones were bought from Kinokuniya and Tokyu Hands.

Getting Things Right

2009-12-23T19:17:00.000+08:00

Thoughtful Steps to getting started in miniature-making, or well any hobby for that concern.

1. Check out your local scene, know who your fellow hobbyists are. These people will be a source of help if you ever run out of... well solutions. Google for them, forum-search for them - most likely you would find them.

2. Check out the global scene while you can, getting exposed to all sorts of styles will boost your creativity levels.

3. Collect reference material and tutorial sites or books. Books are a must for me - but be careful about what you purchase, you do not want repeat tutorials of anything. Buy a variety - check out amazon.co.jp - they ship to Singapore! Or Barnes and Nobles.

4. Think about what you want to focus on - be it miniature pastry, furniture or savories. Work on small goals to complete a set of recipes or learn certain skills.

5. Know where to purchase tools and resources, whether online or locally. Budget well. Such hobbies can be expensive! Work around with what you may have at home, some items may end up to be tools or additions you might not have thought of in the first place.

6. Set up a resource site to gather your links, photographs and reference materials, be it a Facebook personal group page, a Delicious account; an online set of resources will help you much greatly!

The First Step to Doing Anything...

2009-12-23T18:06:00.000+08:00

...is to prepare loads.

Going into a new hobby takes time and thought. Two months was what I needed to decide to do away with all the old anime and manga collections, to decide fanart drawing wasn't really for me, though the years with W.S. were a grand experience, and to venture into what I really, truly loved best.

Going into miniature-making and miniature collection is a big investment, in terms of time, effort taken to learn, and expenditure. I pored over websites from all around the world, lurked around the local scene to learn of the people who share this common interest and took note of the tools I would need for my work.

Perhaps I was also inspired by the film, Julie and Julia, and the motivation to actually do something with an interest and see it bloom. Hopefully I can too maintain this as much as a stretch of five years at best. It is great that I have a fellow friend who share in this craziness of collecting Re-Ment and like products with me so you don't feel so much alone.

So a toast to a new hobby, a new start and burning pockets!