Margherita Pizza - A guest #FakeFoodFriday post from Hannah Fenske!

Hello all, it's that time again for a guest post!  This time we have a tutorial on Margherita Pizza from Hannah Fenske, who I worked with at the Opera. This delish dish (yeah, I said it) was for 2018's The Italian Girl in Algiers at the Santa Fe Opera. Take it away, Hannah!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi y’all!  Happy Fake Food Friday!

Aimee shared a great tutorial last month for her version of leftover pizza, but there’s no single way to make a pizza!  I was tasked with making one last summer, and used some different techniques to accomplish a similar product.  It was requested as a rehearsal stand-in for what would eventually be a practical margherita pizza consumed onstage in a very silly scene.  This meant that it didn’t need to be anything fancy, but the desire to make something pretty combined with a quiet work week allowed me to go all out on this project!

Materials: Thin upholstery foam, hot glue, Jaxsan, papier mache, Flex Glue, fake ficus leaves, acrylic paint, gloss sealer (also, round plastic tray and pop rivets)

Tools: Heat gun, scissors, hot glue gun, sandpaper, Olfa knife, paintbrushes (also, pop rivet gun)

First, I started off with a thin piece of upholstery foam (1/2” or so) and cut it into a rough circle.  I wanted the final product to have some flexibility to it to mimic real slices of pizza, but in retrospect, after I added the layers of hot glue and Jaxsan, the pieces ended up fairly stiff.  While the foam worked really well aesthetically, I would probably recommend using some craft foam as a base instead if you want a more flexible end product.

For my particular pizza, since I knew it would be carried around stage and tipped towards the audience, I needed to keep the slices on the tray and together until they were removed for “eating”.  I accomplished this by adding some pop rivets to the tray and keeping the corresponding hole in each slice marked and clear throughout the process. You can see my Sharpie marks in the next picture.

From there, I cut some additional pieces of the same foam to build up the edges for a thick crust look.  I made sure to vary them in width and placement since real pizza crust isn’t perfectly consistent. Then, since papier mache doesn’t really like sticking to upholstery foam, I painted a layer of Jaxsan onto the crust and let it dry before adding a few layers of good ol’ papier mache.  This gave the crust a nice lumpy look and feel while still being smooth enough to look like crust. After a bit of sanding, I also ended up adding a layer of Flex Glue to the crust for added stability and to smooth out any rough spots.

Next, tomato sauce!  I added liberal amounts of hot glue to the center of the pizza, making sure to overlap the edges of the papier mache to keep them from curling up.  Once a section was covered with a puddle of glue, I would wait for it to partially set up, then go back and use the tip of the gun to add texture by re-melting the glue in places.  I considered using a more sophisticated material like silicone for this, but I liked the malleability of hot glue since I added lots of texture with this step (also, hot glue is way easier to paint!).  Once the layer of tomato sauce was built up and cooled, I added a few specific smooth puddles of glue that would become the melted slices of fresh mozzarella. (Sidenote: If you’ve never had a slice of classic Italian-style margherita pizza with the fresh mozzarella slices, you’re missing out!  It is by FAR my favorite kind of pizza. Go try it.)

Basil came next.  I acquired some leaves from a silk ficus tree, and since basil shrinks and gets sort of wrinkly when it’s cooked, I took a heat gun to them.  Worked like a charm! I also pressed them flat while they were still warm since they were initially a bit too voluminous to be convincing.

The next steps were a lot of careful layers of paint.  I based the whole thing in a pizza dough beige, then added a variety of browns to darken the crust, focusing on darkening the places where the dough “bubbled”.  I used two or three reds for the sauce, and after painting the cheese white, I added some yellow in the low spots where the oil would have pooled. I painted the basil a darker green, glued it on, and added bits of even darker green and brown to the cooked edges.  To seal it, I added a layer of gloss to all of the sauce, cheese, and basil.

Also, once I realized that my pizza wasn’t going to be particularly flexible, I went ahead and added a layer of Jaxsan to the bottom (not pictured, sorry).  This gave it a nice crumbly feel, and with some paint, it blended in well to the edge crust.

As much as I didn’t want to cut up my lovely pizza, it did need to be sliced.  I made the cuts with an Olfa knife, then painted the sides of the slices strategically with the beige, reds, and whites.  The edges didn’t end up looking as finished as they could have with some additional papier mache and/or Flex Glue, but I wanted to make sure that the pieces fit together as snugly as possible.

And here you have the end result!   Don’t you love when a fun project goes even better than you expected?  I tend to get the wiggles when I’m in a good place creatively, and there were lots of those during this project.

Wishing you happy crafting and creative wiggles of your own.  Prop on!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks Hannah! If you want to check out more of Hannah's stuff, you can check out her website at www.hannahfenske.com.  

Read more

Leftover Pizza - #FakeFoodFriday

Friday is pizza day, the best day of the week!
This leftover pizza was made for Max Bialystock's office in The Producers.  I got to work with my new favorite material, gel wax!  I hope y'all are ready for a lot of pictures, because I went overboard on this project...

Materials: Cake boards, shelf liner, Foamies sheet foam, Jaxsan, thin thermoplastic, Gel Wax, sawdust, Glossy Wood Tone, acrylic paint, machine or mineral oil
Tools: Olfa knife, hot plate & pan, spoon, heat gun, cheese grater (if you have a non-food one)

I started with some wedges of shelf liner laminated to some sheet foam (foamies, fun foam, etc depending on where you buy them), and then coated with Jaxsan, building up a slight crust edge on one side.  

I then painted with acrylic and dusted with glossy wood tone.  I also made pepperonis out of some thin thermoplastic that I found in stock.  

For my sauce, I melted some gel wax and added wax dye for color. I did a lot of sampling on white to see what it would look like when it was dry. I ended up adding some regular white candle wax to firm it up and add some opaqueness. I also ended up adding some sawdust in hopes to add some tomato-y texture. In the end I should have used more, as it didn't build up as much as I hoped that it would.

I spooned my gel wax onto my pizza slices and let it set.  As you can see, my sawdust didn't add as much body as I thought it would once it was on the slices.  

CHEESE!

For the cheese I tinted more gel wax and put it in a mini pie tin to cool.  (I've actually been keeping several of the pie tins around because they're great to use with the gel wax.  They're non-stick so everything peels or pops out and it's super handy.) I used a mix of yellow and brown tints and added quite a bit of white regular wax (really they were old emergency candles because that's what I had). There was also a wedge of yellow wax that was in our materials stock that I grabbed in case I wanted to add a little variety into the cheese.  

I couldn't find a grater in stock, so I shaved my cheese with an Olfa knife and added in the pepperoni slices.  

It's super hard to hold a heat gun and take a picture at the same time

Cooking the pizza!  Which basically entailed me passing a heat gun over the slices until my wax melted again.  i tried not to fully melt all the cheese to keep some of the texture, so I did it in stages.

Previously I had artfully added some machine oil (mineral oil or sewing machine oil also works) to my cake boards to make them look greasy.  I don't recommend using any kind of real veg oil because it can smell.  
I just slapped my slices down, sprinkled some leftover sauce and cheese wax and hit it with a heat gun again.  I tried smearing some of the sauce around as well.  I ended up using the wax to hold the slices on, which was moderately successful.  Hot glue probably would have been more effective, but I didn't have a hot gun handy and was in a hurry (of course).  

I let them cool and off they went to rehearsal.  They ended up stuck in funny places as 'gross' set dressing.  

Though thin crust isn't my favorite, I'd still eat it, because any pizza is better than no pizza... unless it's made of foam and wax, I guess... 

At the time this post goes live I'll be on my way to my summer job in Santa Fe, where I will definitely be eating pizza with green chile at some point.  If all goes according to plan, Fake Food Fridays will continue throughout the summer!  As always, I'm still accepting guest tutorials!

Read more

Cheese!

Materials: White Latex Acrylic Caulk, Acrylic Paint, Spatula

Well, all, I promised you cheese for our sandwiches and, unlike most of my other 'Part One' posts, I'm gonna give you the part two for this one!

You might remember another post about cheese that I wrote a while back.  That cheese was made with hot pour vinyl. The vinyl cheese has an incredibly 'cheesy' look to it. It looks greasy and wonderful. The caulk cheese (insert 12 year old- like guffaw) can be glued to things, and is a little more shelf stable. Plus, if you don't have hot pour vinyl in your shop, you can make this for a lot less money.

The sliced cheese is actually incredibly simple to make.  Basically, all it is is colored caulk left to dry flat.  First, tint the caulk to the desired color. I used acrylic paint for this batch, but any water based tint should do it.  Then, spread the caulk out until you have a thin, smooth sheet of it.  I did my first batch on wax paper, but that got a bit wrinkly. Aluminum foil or plastic seem to be the best way to go, but make sure to avoid wrinkles. 

 

 

Then, I let the caulk dry to the touch.  It's going to have to dry on both sides, so plan to peel the backing off and let that side dry, too.  You should be able to judge pretty well when the caulk is dry enough for you to peel off the backing, and you can always test by peeling off a corner.  If you let it sit too long, it will be harder to peel off, but it shouldn't be impossible.

Once the cheese was dry on both sides, I cut it into 4" squares.

It's the best thing since sliced bread!

Happy Propping, y'all!

Read more