Chinese Valentines Day is next Monday. Are you still wandering around trying to find a suitable gift for her? Doll? Perfume? Wallet? Tie? No, no, no, these may not fully express your little thoughts. , and it’s expensive. If you are still troubled by these, you might as well take a look at my proposal. For Valentines Day, of course it should be sweeter. What else is more suitable for this holiday with shining red hearts than desserts.
1. Tools and materials
1.1 Necessary materials and tools
◆ Scissors
◆ Wet wipes or a clean hand cloth
◆ Blade
◆ A smooth rolling stick, if not available, a glass bottle can be used instead
◆ A hollow bottle cap
◆ Tape
◆Toothpick
◆ A cutting mat or a large enough piece of ceramic tile, glass or even a kitchen dish, as long as it is made of smooth flat material
◆ Talcum powder
◆ Various soft clays, ultra-light clays, and resin clays can generally be found in local handicraft stores or art supply stores. If they are not available, please ask for help from Taobao, or simply use plasticine from a stationery store instead. It’s just that the color and storage properties are poor
◆ 9-pin or several thin wires
◆ A lobster clasp mobile phone chain, you can disassemble this part from a broken one or a pendant you don’t like and use it again
◆ Glycerin or any other oil you can find, even kerosene and gasoline... I have not tried household cooking oil, maybe you can tell me the test results
1.2 Other materials and tools
◆ If you can have a box of colored chalks, that would be perfect, or you can make do with the chalks used in class. Of course, without this, the finished product will not be bad
◆Hand Cream
◆ Some beautiful cardboard
◆ Packaging ribbons or other decorations
◆ A few colored pens or paints
2. Start production
◆ Before we officially start, I have to remind you to remember to clean your hands, dry them, and wipe your work surface as well.Keep it clean and try to avoid fine dust. You must know that even a little bit of cotton wool will give our finished product a dirty feeling. No one wants to eat a macaron that lacks food hygiene protection. After doing this, please take out the hand cream and apply an appropriate amount on your hands. This can protect our skin, especially when the quality of the polymer clay you bought is not that good. Then, find a clean piece of light-colored polymer clay and carefully put it in your hands. Knead, using your fingers and palms together, to remove as much small fibers, dust and the like that are difficult to detect with the naked eye. Within a few seconds, you will find that the soft clay has become dirty, and you can now proceed to the next step. Already working.
These are the tools and materials I used. Some of them are not shown due to space constraints, but you can discover them in the next process.
First cut the thick cardboard into squares of the same size, then stack them according to the thickness of the round cake you want, and tie them tightly with tape. I used a 2mm thick gray board and stacked the two pieces together to ensure a 4mm thickness for the round cake. Make two copies like this and set them aside for later use.
Pick out the flavors that you or your TA usually like. To please her, of course you have to cater to them. If she likes chocolate but you give her a strawberry, I think the effect will not be as good as chocolate. I took out various colors of mud, and I chose white, lemon yellow, and cooked brown.By mixing and kneading them in different proportions, these polymer clays can be turned into another color. Please refer to the elementary school art class for the principle. If you have lost this knowledge, please directly choose the polymer clays of ready-made colors, and then add a little white , this can soften the originally bright colors, and the finished product will not look too much like plastic products.
◆ Color mixing is actually very simple. If you want the mixed mud to be uniform in color, roll it into a long strip first, then pick up the two ends and twist it into a twist, round it, then roll it into a long strip, twist it, and so on. Repeat several times and you will almost be able to mix a piece of mud with a uniform color. I mixed beige mud to pretend to be original vanilla cake, and then added some cooked ocher. I kneaded it a few times without kneading it evenly. Now it looks like a piece of mud with a vanilla marble cake pattern. You can add it next Seen in that picture.
Put the colored polymer clay on the ceramic tile, put the previously made cardboard on both sides, then take out your rolling pin and roll it flat. Thick cardboard can ensure that you apply even pressure on the rolling pin and will not create an uneven piece of clay.
After rolling out the clay piece, take out the hollow round cover prepared in advance and press it to make a circular mark on the clay sheet. You can press the mark a little deeper, but don’t press it directly to break it, otherwise it will take a while. A lot of effort went into making the hem.
Use a toothpick to continue digging out a circle on the impression made by the lid. You can see that there will be rolled mud crumbs on the edge. Don't worry about these and continue to draw. Remember to keep the round shape in the middle. Don't scratch too happily. Go too far and it will happen all over again.
Now, you can pick up the mud on the edges with your hands, and gently peel them away from the middle disc. If the adhesion is difficult to peel off, poke it a few times with a toothpick and continue until the outer circle is peeled off. Finally, we have a complete almond pancake with its own skirt, but the shape of the skirt may not meet the requirements and needs to be sorted out.
Gently use a blade to scoop up the round cake from the tiles. Remember to be gentle in this action, otherwise you may only get a deformed small round cake. In order to save production time, do not rework, and refuse violence.
Pinch the small round cake in your hand, and remember to be gentle in your movements. Polymer clay is not rubber and has no elasticity. It will deform with too much force and has no self-healing ability. There are several things to do when holding the small round cake in your hands. Check carefully to see if there are any fine fibers stuck to the surface. If there are any, please use the tip of a knife to gently remove them, and then use your fingertips to smooth out the scratches; use a toothpick to tidy up the skirt. Keep it from being too open, or use these movements to draw, pull and poke at the less obvious areas of the skirt to add some folds; finally, use your fingertips to lightly rub the upper edge of the round cake to make it look more rounded.
After making two such small round cakes, you can gently bring them together to see if they are consistent in size and shape, and then start making the fillings. The flavor of the filling is still up to you, but I still recommend not to make it too different from the color of the outer layer, and try to avoid using highly saturated contrasting colors. I mixed cooked brown, white and a little beige to make a chocolate filling. Since the filling needs to be soft and semi-liquid, you can add an appropriate amount of glycerin to it. One or two drops are enough to make it soft. Don’t add too much. After all, what we want to do is a semi-liquid filling, not chocolate. cream. (Since I couldn’t find glycerin at the moment, I used NUXE full-effect oil instead. The same principle proves that Johnson’s baby oil, skin care base oil, etc. can be added and produce effects.)
Mix the colors, add glycerin and knead. When you finally get a sticky piece of stuff that looks like wet dough, congratulations, you succeeded. Now we can use this piece to make fillings. Find a 9-point needle, which can usually be purchased at a jewelry store. If not, you can use thin wire, a paper clip, or the like instead. Bend one end of the 9-shaped needle and insert it deeply into the finished filling. Remember to leave the looped end outside. The curved part can help fix it, at least to avoid cell phone chain hooksThe embarrassment of slipping away and leaving only one needle.
Shape the chocolate filling into a cake shape, place it in the center of a small round cake, and then gently push it around with your fingers to cover the flat surface of the small round cake as much as possible.
Now, cover it with another small round cake, and after carefully aligning the edges, we finally get a macaron. This seems a bit monotonous? If you have a pastel pen, you can use a razor blade to scrape some powder off and sprinkle it on the ice to act as cocoa powder for decoration. If you don’t have these, talcum powder is also a good idea, which can be used to pretend to be frosting. Of course, another role of talcum powder is as an additive. You can add an appropriate amount of talcum powder to the sticky dough to make it Slightly harder and drier, just the opposite of glycerin. Using these two additives can solve a lot of your worries.
◆ After the above steps are completed, you can put it into the oven and bake it at 130℃ for 15-20 minutes. Take it out after cooling. Okay, relax, this is of course not meant to be baked and eaten. The material of polymer clay determines that it needs to be heated to high temperatures to shape. This is different from air-drying clays such as ultra-light clay and resin clay. If you are using the latter, You can skip this step directly, find a ventilated place with less dust, and wait a day or two. If you don't have an oven, you can shape it by steaming. Find a small bowl, put the finished product in it, seal it with plastic wrap, then put it in a steamer, boil the water slowly over low heat, and keep it boiling for about fifteen minutes. Fire, and taking it out after cooling can also play a role in shaping. However, compared to oven shaping, the final product may not be as strong, but when used to handle this small pendant that is almost a whole, the problem will not be too big. However, please keep in mind that whether you decide to use the oven or steam to shape the soft clay, do not take it out immediately after reaching the set temperature time. This may easily lead to cracks or even disconnection in the finished product due to the excessive temperature difference between the inside and outside.
Feel that a small pendant can’t express your sincerity? Then you might as well do some more processing. Before writing this tutorial, I had baked half a dozen macarons in various flavors. It would be more decent to dress them up and take them out. However, considering that each of these small desserts is only about the size of a fifty cent coin, It was a bit difficult to find suitable ready-made paper boxes, so I could only lay them out on paper towels for the time being and make a matching paper box.
Choose a piece of colored cardboard that you like. It is best not to weigh less than 150 grams. The paper box stacked with too light paper is easy to deform and lacks texture. After trying several permutations and combinations of macarons, I found a 350g beef card and drew a drawing of a box on it that would line up the macarons for packaging.
Cut out the cardboard as shown in the picture, fold it and stick it with white latex or double-sided tape. , this step is very simple. Anyone who has folded paper airplanes as a child can usually do it. A handy origami knife will make the production process more convenient and effective.
After making the bottom box, I also took another piece of paper and drew the drawing of the box cover. I chose a piece of 400g light beige parchment paper. This kind of paper with light irregular texture on the surface is very suitable for romantic style. occasion. What needs to be reminded is that the inner diameter of the lid should be larger than the inner box, especially for thick cardboard products, otherwise it is easy to be embarrassed that it cannot be put in after finishing. I left about 2mm for the length and width of the inner diameter of the lid. room.
Do you think the single-color box lid is too plain and not suitable for the festive atmosphere? There are two solutions. One is to choose cardboard with a pattern itself, and the other is to DIY it with watercolor pens or paints. They all work well. Since the box is too small, it would be difficult to draw directly, so I used a rubber stamp to complete this task. Find a hard eraser, use a pen knife to carve out three heart shapes of different sizes, and then use ink pads of different colors to stamp the pattern on the paper. Do you feel your eyes are brightening now?
Continue making the paper box. I cut a small piece of PVC, then hollowed out the middle part of the box lid, and used double-sided tape to stick the transparent PVC on the inner layer, so that the contents inside could be seen from outside the box. PVC is a material that is mostly used to make transparent packaging boxes. The piece I cut was originally used to hold a mobile hard drive. Those who love digital products will definitely be familiar with this kind of packaging box. They usually buy digital products. Keep a few of them handy when making products, they might come in handy later.
Fold, glue, and bang, now we have a complete box that can put the macarons in! I spread oil paper in the bottom box, put the macarons one by one, and then closed the box Cover, does it look a bit like a finished product from a cake shop? If you don’t have oil paper, you can use a thin layer of paper towel to copy it.
◆ Now that everything is done, add decorative ribbons and other things to the box. As long as you think it is beautiful, I used sulfuric acid paper and convex powder to make a decorative red heart and put it under the ribbon. The box can be used as a COS cake. shop gift box.
Take the vanilla marble macarons out of the oven, put them on the lobster clasp mobile phone chain, and take a group photo with them~ Dangdangdangdang, now you have a box of perfect macarons and an almost real horse. Caron pendants, what are you waiting for? Send them out quickly. For boys, remember to pair them with a bouquet of roses! Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your partner:)
3. Some remarksMing and others
As for the difference between polymer clay and air-drying clay, what I want to say is that each has its own advantages and disadvantages. You don’t have to care about what you use. As long as you are willing, you can use any material to make great use of it. Because polymer clay does not dry naturally during the production process, it can be shaped at any time and has strong ductility. It is suitable for children who are slow to work with hands and like to fiddle with details. However, it requires relatively high hardware. It is best to have a dedicated oven for the final product. The shape is finalized, and the finished product is generally not strong enough and is a relatively fragile product that needs careful care. Of course, as long as you store it carefully and don’t drop it or touch it, and keep it away from children, it can still be stored for a long time, and it won’t get bugs. It can be scrubbed with clean water.
As for air-drying clay, since it is likely to start drying during the production process, the production time is relatively short and needs to be solved quickly. At the same time, the preservation of clay requires more details than polymer clay. , you need to wrap it carefully with plastic wrap to isolate the air, otherwise when you take it out to play next time, you may find that it has turned into a hard stone. However, this type of clay does not require professional hardware for shaping. After completion, it can be naturally hardened and shaped by placing it in a ventilated place for a period of time. Moreover, due to the characteristics of clay, the finished product is tough and elastic, and is not so easy to break. It is also very interesting to grasp the characteristics of various clay materials and combine them together to make them. It does not matter what you choose, the important thing is to choose the materials that you are comfortable with.
