Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Picked- Over Cheese Platter


In a recent production, the second act opens on the remains of a party. The guests have left, the bar is littered with empty cups and cans, dirty paper plates, and crumpled paper napkins. A buffet table sits in the corner, covered in trays of picked-over roast beef, bread, pasta, and cheese.

The cheese platter is a good example of how dressing can make or break the prop. The most convincing part of this prop is probably the black plastic deli tray, followed by the garnishes. The only part of this prop that I fabricated was the cheese. I used hot pour vinyl, colored with yellow and orange tint, poured thin, and cut into triangles. To cut down on the sheen of the vinyl, I dusted the "cheese" lightly with talcum powder, my go-to for de-stickifying things.

As I said, the real key to this prop is the dressing. The black deli tray was purchased at Sam's Club, and boy, does it sure say "we picked up some party platters at the local grocery store deli." The grapes and lettuce are other clues, and were easy to pull from stock and hot glue to the platter. They definitely give the party platter look.

A note: I can't find a darn thing to get cooled hot pour vinyl to adhere to that darn deli tray. Hot glue, epoxy, liquid nails, vinyl adhesive, silicone, more hot pour vinyl, nothing worked. If you have a solution to get that stuff to glue down to something, I would love to hear it, drop it in the comments. Better yet, write it on the back of a twenty dollar bill, and mail it to me.

3 comments:

  1. Great blog!
    Thank you for sharing some of your expertise. Very professional and beautiful work. I'm into electronic props so I'm yet to do my first cake :-)

    Have you tried Poly Cement or Gorilla PVC glue as an adhesive for your Deli tray?

    Greetings from Sweden

    ReplyDelete
  2. Eric-

    Thanks for the ideas, I will give them a try. I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying the blog!

    -Anna

    ReplyDelete
  3. try UGlu, (pronounced you-glue) its like the sticky stuff on the back of new credit cards. They make it industrial/ permanent, and it works on just anything! Its one of my favorite things... www.ugluit.com

    ReplyDelete

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