Recently I attended a week of artisan level instruction in miniatures in Maine, put on by IGMA (The International Guild of Miniatures Artists), a group I am proud to be a member of. While there, I took several classes from a number of very talented artists. My two main classes were held during the day for several hours each, for a total of six days. They also offered a few shorter classes in the evenings that ran 2-3 hours each.
One of these classes involved learning to make miniature peaches out of Sculpty clay. I have dabbled in a lot of things, but I had never tried miniature food before, so I was not sure how hard it would be. Happily, I seem to have taken to it rather naturally and I am very pleased with how my first attempt came out.
Believe it or not, this is mainly just a mix of a yellow-orange clay, which is then lightly brushed with red pastel chalk that has been ground up into a powder. The trick is to only dab it on one side of the peach, as that is how real peaches tend to look. Take a look the next time you are in the grocery store. The fruit tends to only be kissed by the sun on one side, which is what causes the coloring.
I am afraid the beautiful basket was not made by me, but rather by a talented New England artist by the name of Al Chandronnait. I bought some instructions from the teacher who taught this class to make some bread and fancy cookies and I look forward to trying my hand at those.
Oh, and I am a bit bummed. I went to cut out the fabric for the green grocery bag from the chocolate colored rabbit fabric, and found it was cut thin and long and so I can't fit the pattern on it, without sewing two pieces together and getting a seam in an unsightly place on my bag! Arghh! So I will save that fabric for another project and use something else.
