Wednesday, August 22, 2012

It ain't easy bein' cheesy.

Actually, in this case, it's REALLY easy bein' cheesy.



Materials: Hilti foam, Spray Paint, a kickass graphics artist

These are for our upcoming production of 'Assassins' and they were a hoot to make.  The actress will be eating out of the bag- but she prefers to eat something that won't leave cheesy orange powder all over her costume and props. Can you blame her? Cheetoes are delicious, but you have to be committed to orange. Our solution is a double layered bag.  Jill Lyons, prop graphics artist extrordinaire, created our vintage bag. This, we stuffed with a layer of fake Cheetoes, and nestled a clean plastic bag inside to act as a nest for the edible snacks.

It's worth noting that we did consider using real Cheetoes, but decided that the real thing wouldn't hold up to the constant use, and we'd end up with Cheeto dust.  (How exactly DO you spell the singular of Cheetoes?)

These are incredibly simple to make. I used our Hilti foam gun to make tiny strings of foam on aluminum foil , which I then allowed to cure in our spray booth.

Ignore the blob in the middle, I was playing with sprayer setting. Hey, I said to ignore it!
 Once the stringies were cured, I used Design Master spray paints to make them look cheesy.  I first used a layer of yellow to make the corn curl color, then hit them with orange for the cheese powder.

Yikes! Blurry photo!


That's it! This is yet another one of those food props that is sold by it's packaging as much as its substance.

Don't you think?

Happy Propping!

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Waxing Faux-etic



Me: 'Hey all! I'd like to take a moment to welcome myself back to the Fake-n-Bake kitchen after a summer away for the opera season.'

Myself: 'Thanks, Anna, you know, it's been a while since I've posted here on the blog and I just wanted everyone to know that while I was toiling away in the desert, my thoughts often strayed to my Fake-n-Bakers.'

Me: 'That's great Anna, welcome back. Tell us, what have you brought for us today?'

Myself: ' Well, in the spirit of the Olympics, I thought we'd take a look at fake food from another country. The USA may win the gold medal in swimming, but if there was an event in fake foodery, Japan would take the gold.'

Me: 'That's really dumb, why are you talking like Bob Costas?'

Myself: 'Your face is talking like Bob Costas.'

Me: 'Uh, okay, getting back to the food. Why is Japan so good at fake food?'

Myself: 'Well, according to my extensive research on Wikipedia and the feature film 'Big Bird Goes to Japan......'

Me: 'You mean 'Big Bird Goes to China?'

Myself: 'Whatever.  According to my research, restaurants in Japan often use display dishes or sampuru to advertise their dishes to passers by.  The display pieces are unique to each restaurant's menu and are executed in beautiful detail.'

Me: 'Those look good enough to eat! Now, for our readers at home who would like to make their own sampuru, where should they start?"

Myself: 'Funny you should ask! I've brought two videos to get people going, and both are pretty straightforward. It looks to me like both techniques are done using paraffin wax, which can be purchased in any grocery store. Be careful while heating and melting paraffin, it can be quite flammable. You can melt crayons into the wax to color it, but if you are making large batches, I recommend buying candle coloring pellets like the ones sold at www.thecandlemaker.com. Soda cans are a great container for heating paraffin in a water bath as they are light weight and disposable. Just cut the tops off with a pair of craft or kitchen shears, and watch out for sharp edges.'

Me: 'Great Anna, we'll get to the videos, but first, are there any paraffin projects here on the Fake-n-Bake blog already?'

Myself: 'Indeed, Anna, the pickled herring for Cabaret was made of paraffin. Now to the videos, I have two for you today, both from the traditional Japanese website 'YouTube' the first shows a man making beautiful fake lettuce, and the second shows a technique for wax tempura.'

Me: 'Well, that's all the time we have today on the Fake-n-Bake kitchen. I hope you've enjoyed our post. Welcome back to Anna, and happy propping to all!'

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