Friday, January 15, 2010

Experiment: 1:12 cake art slices


1 12 cake slices experiment results
Originally uploaded by Snowfern

the bases were part of a previous batch, you can look through my archives for those experiment results.

so some of them, i'd already 'painted' to see if i could achieve the same cake art i use on my donuts (achieved with liquid polymer clay), so since they were sort of a failure, i decided to go ahead and bake them.

after baking, i would say the colours of the cake itself weren't as vibrant, but not -too- noticeable really. also, the ones that had the 'protective layer' from the previous experiment, the liquid polymer clay painted on a lot easier (of course), and i'd deliberately worked slowly to see if the ones without the layer would 'absorb' the polymer clay.

summary of sorts:

- better to have a sealant layer separating the ADC (air dry clay) from the LPC (liquid polymer clay)

- LPC doesn't really get 'absorbed' into ADC very much, at least not for the 20mins or so i'd left it while i worked on the rest.

- those without sealant, although appearance wise before baking didn't seem any different, 'sunk' in a little after baking. probably got soaked into the top layer of the ADC.

- ADC might lose vibrancy of colours, perhaps more due to brand of paint i used to colour the clay?

- cracks might develop, i was expecting the ones with the 'sealant' not to crack, but it did (you can click on the pic to see the notes on my flickr). probably due to expansion of the ADC during bake process.

- no visible bubbling due to air rising from ADC into LPC, unevenness apparent in pics are due to my careless handling of the LPC (too lazy to spread it on evenly XD )

ALTERNATIVE HANDLING
- think about baking the liquid polymer clay sheets, then sticking it onto the cake slices. but have to be rather precise to achieve desirable results.

- find an easier, better air-dry medium (any recommendations other than nail polish? i remembered that i tossed away my over 30 bottles of nail polish when i moved. they had dried up in their bottles XD)

so there we have it. i think that i will still use this combination and test it a little further, since i'm using up my ADC before (hopefully) it degrades. i love the texture it lends to cake slices, and hope this experiment has been useful/interesting to those who have tried it, or are thinking of incorporating the two.

3 comments:

  1. Cindy,

    You do make a lot of beautiful works and I believe you will learn more after you start giving courses to people!

    I like the zaobao report a lot. You and Peili show exactly your viewpoints, feeling and all the passion of the Miniature Food.
    Congratulations!

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  2. I now remembered what I wanted to tell you. I was at the art shop opposite Bras Basah this weekend and I spoke to the owner because I wanted to buy liquid resin. He told me that liquid resin is so hazardous for health that he really would not encourage using it, not even when the space is open and you are wearing a chemical suit (ok, exaggeration) etc.

    I told him I am looking for something to create liquid effect and he recommended me this compound called "Clear Tar Gel". I have not experimented with it yet and will post when I have done.

    But I just wanted to tell you if there is a substitute for liquid resin , perhaps you should stop using this harmful material especially I see that like me, you are so susceptible to germs and probably poisonous fumes.Let me know if you want to try this "Clear Tar Gel". I can throw some your way !

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  3. Oiseau, thank you for the well wishes! i don't have a place to conduct classes, and since i dread doing so, one would have to pay me HEAPS to teach them what little i know XD XD so frankly, they're better off looking elsewhere for a teacher. i'd rather sell tutorials, if anyone'd buy them XD

    i'm glad you enjoyed the report! and welcome back :)

    Sans, you're referring to the straits chinese arts store right? i popped by the other day too...the resin the guy was talking about is probably the polyester resin, and yes, that stuff is toxic. i don't use that, i use epoxy resin, which although is less toxic, still might trigger allergies in persons who weren't previously allergic to it.

    it's not too bad really, but when i'm in a weaker state, the fumes tend to trigger an asthma attack. :X

    i've considered using texture gels, but that stuff is so expensive that i don't want to try it out unless i'm feeling rich XD i'll wait for your results!

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Thank you for taking the time out to comment! :D