Doll Size Pears

 

Watch the video here.

 

 

I love pears so much, probably because when I was growing up we had a couple of pear trees that always produced a ton of them. I remember we would go out with the tractor and a bunch of boxes and my parents and I would spend a couple of hours picking the pears every year. Then they sat in their boxes for however long it took to ripen. That part always seemed to take way too long in my opinion. Then when they were ripe we got to eat some and the rest my mom canned for us to eat all winter long.

I picked a beautiful pear at the grocery store the other day and as I was admiring how pretty it was and enjoying the warm memories I decided that it would be the perfect addition to the doll's fruit bowl. So here we are with a tutorial for pears. I hope you enjoy making this project as much as I enjoyed making the tutorial for you.

As is the normal starting place for most of my doll food crafting I took a really careful look at the pear I had on hand. If you don't have one on hand at least try to look at some good photos online. You need to work from a reference to get the details.

I am using the box of Sculpey Original that I purchased a while back. If you don't have this clay, any white polymer clay would be fine. I just like to use this one when possible because the cost per ounce is so much less and doll foods can take a bit of clay to make.

Also just like on the majority of my fruits I am using white clay and not a colored clay. I know there are some tutorials out there to make pears from either yellow or green clay. In my opinion the resulting fruit looks way too dense. With the white clay and the careful application of slightly translucent layers of paint you end up with that almost glow that the real fruit has.

Also it limits the number of colors of clay you need to purchase and by just using small amounts of the colored clays you get a lot more for your crafting money.

I did use some very tiny bits of brown clay which came from my bag of scrap clay. The scrap clay bag is a huge resource as you work with polymer clay. When you finish each project just put the leftover mixed bits of clay into a food quality storage bag and you will have a treasure trove of clay to work with in future projects.

To make our pears we are starting with a ball of clay about 1” in diameter. Don't worry about being the exact size, just close to that size. In fact if you are making more than one pear vary the size a little bit. All pears even from the same tree are not identical. Variety will make them look more realistic.

While working on this project (and most clay projects) have a container of cornstarch (the stuff from the kitchen) on hand along with a fluffy brush. I use this to dust my hands/ fingers and work surface to prevent sticking. It is also really helpful when you need to remove finger prints and other minor marks from you clay. The brush I use is a makeup brush designed to apply face powder or powder blush. Check the dollar store and you should be able to find these easily at a really cheap price. I keep my cornstarch for clay work in a tub that held some paste that I used up. You can use any container or just get a small amount in a small dish each time you work with clay.

After we form the clay into a ball we need to use pressure on one side to make the “pear” shape. Again not all pears are exactly the same shape.

The next step is to add a stem and blossom to the top and bottom of your pear. I used very tiny amounts of scrap clay for this. Any brown clay will work. Use a tool of some kind to make the divot for the tiny clay to go into and then add the tiny bit of clay. Use a sharp tool to kind of “tease” some texture to make the blossom look like it should and to add some texture to the stem. I used both a toothpick and my trusty dental pick for this.

For a last and definitely optional step sprinkle some brown chalk “freckles” onto the surface of the pear. Keep these tiny and be careful not to overdue it. I added more and larger for the purpose of the video so that you guys could actually see them on the video. You want to be very subtle here and if you don't want to do this just skip it.

Now it is time to bake our clay. For this I set my oven at 250°F and baked for 1 hour. It seems like a long time but this clay is pretty thick and we need to get it cured all the way through.

After baking be sure to let the clay cool to room temperature before going on the the next step.

Now it is time to add some color to the peel of our pears. I am using some craft acrylic paints in the video I used Daffodil yellow by Anita's with just a touch of Spring Green from Apple Barrel. I then thinned the paint down with a bit of water because I want this paint layer to be fairly translucent, you can always add more but you really can't un-paint them. After the paint dried I checked for any spots I missed and touched those up.

For the pear I had done off camera to prep for the video I used Daybreak Yellow from Folk Art with a bit of Lime Sorbet from Ceramcoat.

 

As a final finish I added a coat of Satin Mod Podge for a subtle shine.

I do love how these turned out and I hope you enjoy them too. If you make things from my tutorials I would love to see pictures of them. 

 

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