Molding Kewpie or Charlotte's

The other day I was working on a silver spoon necklace and I wanted to add a little antique doll. Well the doll was too big for the spoon so I decided to make one from polymer clay. After struggling with it for hours I finally got one I liked...that is when it dawned on me I could have just made a mold of one of my plastic charms to use... so I did that too. I think they came out pretty kewl. I used just regular sculpy and used hand lotion for a release agent. After buttering two slabs with hand lotion, I sandwiched the plastic doll charms between the sculpy, cut it into a cube and separated the halves of the mold. Then I baked the mold. The mold does get hard but you can use the "eraser" sculpy if you want a flexible mold. Once the mold was baked, I painted it with hand lotion again so it would release, then pressed sculpy into it leaving it heaping. I then pressed the top of the mold on and squished them together. After I removed the top I used the excess from the seam edges to lift the little doll out of the other side of the mold, trimmed the seams with an xacto knife, baked them and whala! I am watching a few charms on ebay too so if I win, I can see more molds in my future... being in the Halloween spirit I could not resist adding that little spooky pun :))

Halloween Matchbox Shrine

 

The other day at our local stamp club Lynn Stevens hosted this darling project. I took mine home to finish because I wanted to use this little black cat charm I had. After adding some orange rhinestones for the eyes, I called it finished :))

Cream cheese filled breadsticks

 

 

 I so love having someone to cook for and with all the company I have had this past couple of weeks, I have been doing a lot of cooking. One treat I really love is from one of the frozen pizza brands when came out with a cream cheese filled breadstick. However they are almost $6.00 a package of six : / ouch! I looked everywhere for a recipe for them to no avail so I came up with my own and actually I think my version really tastes better. Since I could not find a recipe for it online I thought I should post it.

 

I start with a simple bread machine recipe for white bread and I use the one for a large loaf.

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of water
1 tablespoon butter
3 cups of "better for bread" flour (this is not self rising just ground finer)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon dry milk
1 3/4 tablespoons salt
2 1/2 teaspoons of bread machine yeast or quick-acting active dry yeast

Place all the ingredients in the bread machine in the order listed. Set the machine for large loaf, white bread and dough only.

Once the machine has completed its work prepare the cream cheese filling. You will need,

1, 8 ounce package of cream cheese
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg yolk (reserve the egg white for later)
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat all the ingredients until creamy and set aside, remove the dough from the bread machine and roll it out as thin as you can without making holes. I got mine about 2 foot by 3 foot. Whip the reserved egg white and spread it over the entire dough. Cut the dough into 4 inch by 6 inch sections. On one side of each section pipe a rope of the cream cheese filling. Roll over and over stopping with the seam side down and the filling spiraled in the center. The egg white spread on the dough previously will seal the filling inside. Use a fork to crimp the ends together and place on an air baking sheet that has been lined with parchment paper. Let rise for about 30 minutes, brush with butter and bake at 320 fahrenheit until golden brown. Yummy served hot and will reheat in the microwave as well.

Free Printabe Potion Labels (Limited Time Offer)

 

 

This was a limited time offer and has now expired but these labels are still available at

 my little etsy store.
This week it is my turn to bring a project for my local stamp club and I chose to do some potion bottles. You really can't see the stamping to well in this picture but the bottles are stamped with spiderwebs, bats, grave stones and such.

A few ideas for filling them, I used cream of wheat for the "Organic Bone Meal" I put black food coloring and some star glitter in the "Black of Night" Fuzzy yarn for the "Wool of Bat" and so on.. have a great Halloween!

Rusty Ladies

I just had to share my latest thrift shop find... can you believe these ladies only cost me $4.50!!! Yep that's right, $4.50 for both! They had some problems though. The head had been broken off one but was still attached by a rebar that ran down through the center. The other had some hair broken off and was missing and they both had paint chipping and flaking off everywhere. So I brushed them down with a wire brush and used concrete patch to repair the broken head and sculpt some new hair. Once sanded, hubby blew them off with his air compresser and I used my homemade rusting technique on them. Aren't they fun! I think I need to make them some hats and masks... maybe some wings?