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Busy, Busy, Busy
The holidays are here and things around the Tack & Feed shop are busy. There hasn’t been much time for crafting with all the baking and decorating that has to be done! Things will pick back up after the New Year. In the meantime, enjoy whatever holiday(s) you celebrate with your friends and family.
These peanut butter blossom cookie pattern weights are available now!
From Failure, You Learn
I have made some progress, though not entirely successful progress.
- I completed another set of four peanut butter blossoms. The new set has the colored adhering clay, which means any oozing appears as melted chocolate now. Wonderful! They’re a bit lighter in color and over-sized. I’m unsure how I feel about those two aspects, but I’m extremely critical when it comes to anything I create.
- I also made two chunks of cornbread with “honey,” though the honey turned out to look more like melted butter than honey, and since butter doesn’t melt from the top down on a piece of hot bread, it looks a bit odd with a drizzle of melted butter on the pats of softened butter. I may have to venture into resins to get the clear look I’ve attempted with cordial cherries and now honey.
- I’ve also finished one “hot chocolate marshmallow cookie,” which is a cookie with a marshmallow on top, accessorized with a candy cane and miniature marshmallows, to mimic the look of a cup of hot chocolate. I intended to create a set of two but realized after starting that I only had enough product for one.
Next up!
I recently purchased a set of cookie cutters, so I hope to get some wintery cookies out before the end of the year. I’ve contemplated making a few ornaments instead of weighing them for pattern weights, since they’d be a little difficult to pick up as flat pattern weights.
Pictures of everything will be uploaded in the near-ish future. The winds of Montana have been wild recently, making sealing products outdoors an unfortunate experiment in How to Stiffen Jeans Using Spray Varnish, and until things are sealed they can’t be photographed, as that would be a dishonest representation of the finished item.
2019 Black Friday Sale!
With Black Friday just around the corner, sales will be popping up like pumpkin spice at the start of autumn. Tack & Feed will also be having a sale! My inventory is limited at the moment, as I’m just one li’l person, but the semi-glazed doughnut and cinnamon roll prototypes, which are already greatly reduced due to their prototype status, will be a further 15% off! In addition to the Black Friday sale, running from November 25 through December 02, the set of four cinnamon rolls has also been reduced by 25% due to a cracking issue with the icing.
If you’ve been considering purchasing something from the store, now’s definitely the time to buy!
Faux Bakery Meets Real Recipes
I am a healthy eater. I avoid oil, salt, dairy, sugar, and wheat. I don’t have an issue with any of those things, in fact, they helped to create some of my favorite foods before I changed my diet, but they don’t fit my lifestyle now. This is quite unfortunate as I think it would be fun to include a recipe with any of the faux foods I sell. I know I’d appreciate opening my box of cinnamon roll pattern weights, which look good enough to eat (don’t do that), and finding a cinnamon roll recipe so I could go make my own. In order to send along a yummy recipe, I’d have to bake and bake a lot. I wouldn’t be able to taste test every recipe tweak and still fit into my pajamas, so it’s not something that’s feasible right now.
However!
I have been considering the possibility of collaborating with a small bakery or an individual who would like to simply share their homemade creations with others. We shall see, I suppose. First, sales must be made to afford such an idea.
In the meantime, if anyone stumbles in here with a fantastic recipe they’d like to share, feel free to post it in the comments!
The Little Extras
My faux baked goods are shipped in proper bakery boxes, or cellophane bags, depending on the item. There are accent liners, tissue papers, and the thing I’m most excited about, scented inserts. That means when you open the box of cinnamon rolls, you’ll smell cinnamon rolls. When you open the bag of peanut butter cookies, the scent of peanut butter cookies will greet you.
I’ve been a member of Etsy since 2008, and one of the things I’ve noticed over the years is how detailed most of the packaging has been. I once ordered a set of hand-turned wooden snowmen that came in a custom fitted felt envelope with a sleeve for each snowman. On the other side of the coin, I ordered something not long ago that arrived wrapped in paper towels and stuffed into a plastic baggy. It really is the little things that set people apart, and I want to make sure my packaging says, “This is not just a way to make a few extra dollars to support my polymer clay habit, but rather a way to share with you the things I’m proud of creating.”
I’ve recently ordered another bundle of fragrance oils to go with all the new baked goods I plan to make. Here’s what on the upcoming menu: cupcakes, mini bunt cakes, mini chocolate cake bites, cornbread with honey, toasted marshmallows (which may possibly lead to s’mores), apple pie, Christmas cookies, and chocolate covered strawberries!
November’s Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies
The peanut butter blossom prototypes mentioned in the previous post are now available at a discounted prototype price!
The whole set of four is only $30, plus free shipping!
All profits from this sale will be MATCHED and DONATED to the International Elephant Foundation.
Failures and More Prototypes!
My adventure with tarts has been a test of perseverance. I made the first one, a pumpkin tart, a second one, another pumpkin tart with a different method for whipped cream, a third tart, a cherry bakewell, and then I stopped making tarts. Spending hours and hours on something, only to have it not turn out in the end, is quite discouraging. So, I’ve been taking a break from that particular confection. Instead, I’ve been making peanut butter blossoms. I completed the first set of four tonight, only to discover an issue at the end of their baking. So! The set will be discounted.
I’ll be sealing them tomorrow, hopefully, if there isn’t any more snowfall. Once they’re complete, I’ll photograph them and list them on Etsy. You can follow Tack & Feed here, on Facebook, or on Instagram to see when they’re released.
For now, here’s a peek at the process!
Note: The toothbrush has only ever been used for texturing polymer clay. Otherwise = icky.
Discounted Prototypes
I started a new line of faux food today! Mini tarts! They’re formed in actual silicone tart pans, then removed and detailed by hand.
Each new prototype takes a lot of time. This particular one, a single pumpkin tart, took about three hours to make.
I have a spreadsheet that details the cost of every item used for each product I make: polymer clay, weights, and pastels, for example, as well as a packaged price that includes the bakery box, tissue, and decorative paper. So everything I create has a base price that isn’t flexible because it’s just whatever it costs to make the product. Since my profit comes from my per hour charge, three hours for one item would increase the cost of the tarts to a level I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay.
Of course, as with most things, practice will help, reducing some of the time required to make the tarts, but some items are just more labor-intensive than others. A doughnut, especially a plain glazed doughnut, takes far less time and effort to create than a cinnamon roll, which takes a lot less time than a pumpkin tart, and my prices reflect the amount of work required to complete a piece.
There are usually “flaws” in my prototypes — the wrong coloring, improperly mixed icing, etc. I alter the aspects I dislike to improve future versions. So, while they take a good bit of time to make, because they’re not up to my usual standards, I sell them at a discounted price. If you’re interested in snagging one of my weights at a deal, keep an eye out for listings in the prototype section!
October’s Handmade Cinnamon Rolls
We live in the country, where mice are commonplace; so I can’t keep freshly baked cinnamon rolls on the counter to pretty up our kitchen, but I can keep these around. They’re calorie-free too, which is even better!
They’re available right now in my Etsy shop! You get the whole set of four!
October’s Handmade Doughnut
This semi-glazed sugary doughnut started off as a pure sugar doughnut but lost its sugar in the glazing process. Discounted because it’s a lonely prototype. It would still look delicious in your bakery photographs or holding down your apron patterns!
First Prototype Available
This particular cinnamon roll is an odd/prototype. Imperfections and/or design flaws make it unsuitable to package with a set or sell as a properly finished product.
I dislike certain aspects of this weight, plus there is a bubble flaw, and the icing was not properly mixed, leaving it looking a little curdled. There are still weights inside, so it functions as intended, it’s just not quite up to my standards.
My experimental “loss” is your gain! Marked down to $15, with FREE SHIPPING! There’s only one!