• Chit Chat

    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.

  • Chit Chat,  Prototypes

    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.