Doll Size Snack Mix

 

Watch the video here.

 

Today's tutorial was inspired by my own craving for some snack mix, so I decided to treat the dolls this week. When I got out my clay I really had no idea how I was going make most of the items we are making today. When I say in the video it took me 3 hours to figure out the square pretzels that is not an exaggeration. I had several ideas but most of them failed miserably. A couple I could get to work sometimes but not consistently. I finally came up with the final idea that you see in the video by combining several of the fail/near fail ideas I had tried.

While I think some of the items are a bit large for scale I am really ahppy with the project. I think the individual pieces are in scale with each other and even though I took a bit of artistic license with some of the elements I know most people will know what they are looking at.

So I started with the rye crisp/chip things. I love those and they actually were pretty easy to figure out. The Hazelnut clay from Sculpey III is a really good color and the sandpaper gives a good texture. The chalk could probably be adjusted a bit, I did add a bit too much in the video. But it is needed to keep the pieces of clay from sticking to the sandpaper.

 

 

 

 Don't worry if the crisps bend or tear coming off the sandpaper the ones in the bag are never perfect.

Next we make the two types of pretzels that were in the bag of snack mix I had bought, round ones and square ones. I did use a lot of the same techniques that I used in the soft pretzel tutorial I did a while back, just in a smaller size.

 

 For the round ones I found that wrapping the clay snake around the skewer then

 

 

 

 

 

 

 cutting 

 

 

 

 

 

and blending the seam worked the best. It was the easiest way to get a consistent size and shape to the pretzels. 

 

 

 

Just like the soft pretzels I just used Original Sculpey for both shapes of pretzels and later for the bread-sticks. Then they were shaded with the same artist chalks I use on pretty much all baked goods.

For the square pretzels I came up with the idea of using the graph paper for sizing the clay squares and then just working right on the paper to get the holes in the correct places. 

 

 

 

 

You are going to see this theme of working top of the graph paper a lot in this video. It is a wonderful way to size things and since I am using a free printable I hope it is something most if not all of you can get your hands on. I do recommend printing it in a draft mode or less ink mode and in grey scale. I find that way I have less issues with ink bleeding into my clay.

For the coarse salt to go on both shapes of pretzels I used the same Mod Podge mixed with sand trick that I did on the soft pretzels. It really gives a good replica of the coarse salt you see on a lot of snacks.

The pretzels are the only snacks in the mix that are coated with Mod Podge this week.

For the bread-sticks I had to come up with a way to get the “bumpy” texture and I think by rolling with the toothpick I got a pretty good shape.

On to the woven cereals that are part of the mix. This one was a puzzle for me to figure out also. The big question being how to get that iconic texture? I was rummaging around through my clay texturing tools and came across this small file/rasp/grater thing. It came off one of those things in the pedicure kit from the dollar store that is supposed to be used to file off the dead skin on your heel. It ended up being the perfect tool to use for the woven texture.

 

 

 As for the clay colors to use I started with equal parts of Original Sculpey and Fimo Ocher for the corn “chex” then for the wheat ones I added some of the same Hazelnut color we used earlier.

You can find the graph paper used here.

 

 

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.