Make A Miniature Picnic

When Benevolent Order of Makers, (BOoMNerds on Instagram) was at the North County Mini Maker Faire, Maria and I taught crafting with paper clay. We love paper clay, because it's affordable, easy to use, and we can paint it, after it air dries. Making with the clay was a popular hands-on activity, so I ended up with a lot of loaves of bread from all the demonstrating we were doing.

Today I set up my paints, so I could paint all the miniature bread pieces. Baguettes, a bâtard, and a traditional slicing loaf... and bagels, and pancakes (not pictured.) Painting isn't just a fun, creative part of finishing the paper clay pieces, it's also a necessary step in protecting them, since any moisture could make them start to disintegrate. The acrylic craft paints seals the dried clay.

These are some of the things I made while we demonstrated how to make with paper clay. The baguettes are rolled from a small ball of clay, allowing the ends to get narrower. Then I use the side of a toothpick to gently dent across the tops of the bread so they appear to be scored. They've had plenty of drying time, now we need to get them painted, and sealed.

If you would like more tips and suggestions for making with paper clay, please follow this link, where we give a more complete paper clay tutorial.

To paint the bread, I used acrylic craft paints. First, I painted the whole loaf in a medium brown shade, being sure to get the entire surface sealed in a light layer of paint. Once the first layer was dry, I used a very dry brush to paint on a slightly darker shade of brown, to make it look like the bread has nice crust to it. The last part was adding the palest brown paint into the scores, where the bread would be less browned. I could add one last clear coat with a glossy acrylic paint... something you may notice in the picture of other breads I made. The decision to make the bread shiny is a matter of preference. I like them both ways; shiny, or matte.

Maria brought out some pretty props from her doll house, so we could depict a picnic, featuring a crusty French baguette, still wrapped, and tied with bakery twine! The little bread knife is one of our miniature make creations, too. Today I will finish painting bagels/donuts, and a cake. And we want to create some syrup for the pancakes. We may open a cafe, soon!

What Makers Do

Makers can do incredible things, not only with what they make, but with how they share their creations. Even the smallest gestures can build community, touch hearts, inspire more thoughtful acts. To see an uplifting story about making believe, and healing, please follow this link: A Firefly Forest~

Make Bite Sized Valentines

This is the bite-sized Valentine Maria is sharing with her classmates this year. It's a teeny brownie with a festive flag pick. Festive and sweet~

Here's how they were made...

Supplies:
Mini condiment cups
Washi tape (also called paper tape)
Scissors
Cake or brownie batter

When Maria decided to make mini cupcakes for her class party, I suggested we could decorate them with little flags. Working together we made at least forty of them... fun, easy, and cute! We happened to have this washi tape in our craft stash, and toothpicks in our baking drawer. {I suggest using the toothpicks with a decorative finish on the top, so there's only one sharp end. We found ours at Mitsuwa... a terrific quantity, very reasonably priced.}

At first, aligning the tape took a few tries. The paper tape is very forgiving, and even though it holds well, it also can be pulled apart to adjust. Maria liked working with the polka dotted tapes, because they were easier to center by placing the toothpick between rows of dots.

After folding the tape over the toothpick, we trimmed the end. A pennant cut looks pretty, too. Just snip out a triangle shape from the end.

Ta-Da!

We found the condiment cups at Smart & Final. And the brownie mix is Trader Joe's Truffle Brownie mix. {Have you tried TJ's Truffle Brownies? These bite sized treats are scrumptious!} Each cup held about three teaspoons of batter... and the ones with more tended to overflow... a tasty mess!

Maria is very excited to be giving each school friend a small token of her esteem, and one for teacher, too.

{And yes, we did do a test run with cake batter. Obviously they bake quicker than a full size cake, so don't step away from the oven for too long. We love the mini-many decorating options for these wee treats.}