Jan-chan’s Tidbits

After taking the chocolate clay making class back in summer I’ve finally got the time to try making my own this week. I bought the clay (with colour mixed in) from my teach and just play around with the design of how the chocolate will look like. The hardest one to make is the one that has white and dark chocolate mixed together (like a swirl). To create the swirl you have to twist the dark and white clay together in a way that won’t mix them together completely (you’d end up with “milk chocolate” if you do). Here are some pictures of the final product. I’ve folded boxes to hold them as well as I’m going to give them away as gifts.

Close up of some of the chocolates. The flower one didn't turn out exactly as I've imagined but it'll do for now.

Here are most of the chocolates I've created.

I can't find boxes that'd fit them so I've created my own using origami boxes.

Here's a close up on what they look like in the box.

What do you think? I’m deciding whether to make them into magnets since they’d be more useful that way.

This was a project I had worked on in June that I didn’t have a chance to update until now. The flower this time is Phalaenopsis and it was the flower that had prompted me to do the flower courses. I love how real this flower looks. See for yourself:

Phalaenopsis made amost entirely with clay.

Close up on the flowers.

A closer look at the details.

Another close up on the paint job.

Close up on the buds.

My next project is making chocolate! More on that once I’m done.

The completed cymbidium. The bottom is actually a piece of wood.

My latest clay project from clay class I’ve been taking since March is Cymbidium. They are part of the orchid family. At first I didn’t quite like the look of it so I didn’t put a lot of effort into making the flowers. However when we finally assemble the plant together it turned out nicer than I thought. It is currently sitting in Al’s house along with my two other plants. His mom liked this one the best. Maybe it’s because it’s not a mini plant like the previous two. Our next project will be orchid again. I hope I’ll do well because it was the project that I’ve been looking forward to making and the reason why I’m taking these lessons!

Here are the pictures of the flower (click to enlarge thumbnails):

Mini Mydrangea

Last month’s clay project was a mini hydrangea. We made about 100 of the flowers, from half opened to fully opened ones. We had put some colour in the clay so it’s pale purple (or pink depending on how you see it) before we coloured it after with the oil paint. As you can see I’ve coloured some of mine darker because I wanted it to give it more depth.

The “pot” is actually a very shallow bowl that I got from the Japanese toonie store. I think the pattern on the side matches with the plant quite well. The only thing I wish I could’ve done better was to make some of the stems shorter so it’s closer to the green patch on the bottom. I’m planning to make another one later after I settle down in the new house.

Here are some other shots of the plant (click to enlarge).

The second clay project course I took last month was making the Chinese Sweets Shop (茶果店). It was really fun making Chinese sweets which I had when I was a kid such as glutinous rice ball (糯米糍), “Put Chai Ko” (砵仔糕), white sugar sponge cake (白糖糕), black sesame roll (芝麻卷), banana cake/roll (香蕉糕), etc. I have no idea what  some of them are called in English.

The completed sweets shop (front view).

The back view. A better look at the bucket of tofu pudding.

For close up shots of the individual sweets and a description of what they are, visit my Picasa Album.

I glued down most of the items onto the stand so I can transport it around but left the trays “glue-free” so people can take them out for a closer look. As a foodie I really liked making the food stands but have decided to concentrate on learning flowers first as I can make those as gifts. I’ll probably continue with the food stands series after I finish up with the flowers classes.