Lettuce! - A Quick #FFFriday from Katie Webster!

This week's Fake Food Friday is quick one, mostly because I just started my summer job in Santa Fe and the lack of air here has made me le tired.  Anna made some lettuce for The Dagwood of Your Dreams, which was awesome and cartoony.  Katie Webster at the Denver Center has a slightly different technique for a different look!

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Another fun faux food project with the thin packing foam sheet! My fellow prop artisan Roo Huigen had made adorable seedling sprouts with the translucent packing foam. I thought I could translate her idea into lettuce form when we had to make crates of abundant food for Oklahoma! In this case, I cut loose leaf shapes from a shiny, sheer, synthetic fabric that we had in our fabric stock. 

That was key to the success of this project and saved a lot of time. If you were trying to recreate this exact process, it will depend on the fabric you have access to, and you will have to experiment to achieve the look you want. Look for sheer, somewhat stiff synthetic fabric. Luckily we had green, but a pale yellow or white could work.

 Then I used hot glue to create leaf veins on the fabric leaf. While it was cooling I sandwiched on a layer of the thin packing foam. 

I trimmed the edges of all the leaves, then in a well ventilated area I used a heat gun to melt the fabric and foam. The foam and fabric melt at different times, creating organic ripples and soft curled edges and emphasizing the hot glue 'veins'.

I toned the leaves with various Design Master sprays to maintain the translucent look of the leaves. 

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Thanks, Katie!  I'd love to see how this technique looks with different fabric colors, it could make for some very interesting greens.  

Katie is a part of INCITE Colorado and you can learn about them here!  She also contributed a post about some excellent looking conchas and chilaquiles.  

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Conchas & Chilaquiles Faux-Mex - FFFriday Guest Post from Katie Webster!

This week's guest post comes from the delightful Katie Webster at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.  I had the good fortune of working with Katie at the Santa Fe Opera!

Take it away, Katie!
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Pan Dulce: 
We had some delicious Mexican food to create for a production of American Mariachi at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. For this box of pan dulce, including the charming Conchas, everything started with upholstery foam scraps. There are soooooooo many styles (have you seen the Elote ones---bread shaped like corn?) but the conchas are colorful and instantly recognizable. 

I sculpted the upholstery foam into a dome shaped bun. Then I scored the 'shell' pattern into it, maybe 1/4" deep. I sliced away selectively to mimic the cookie crumble topping that is on the conchas. 

A few years ago I learned to keep my blade oiled up when carving any type of foam! 

The Cuernas were shaped by cutting a triangle of 1/4" thin upholstery foam sheet, sprayed with Foam and Fabric adhesive, and then rolling up like you would a real crescent roll.

Then I did a tissue paper layer ( I used Rosco Crystal Gel as the medium but white glue would do the trick).

Next it came down to painting: they definitely got dusted with Design Master's Glossy Wood Tone. For the colorful 'toppings' I used some tube acrylic colors as they had a nice thickness. The finishing touch was a sprinkle of translucent glitter while wet to really capture the sugar coated look. Cinnamon sugar was finely ground cork mixed with glitter, and the powdered sugar was a bit of styrofoam shaved off with a rasp.

Chilaquiles: 

The chilaquiles feature one of my favorite faux food materials, the foam that comes in various thicknesses for packing material! I don't even have a precise term for this, do you know? I've heard so many names for this stuff!  Foam packing sheets, slip sheet, micro foam and roll foam.  It is SO HANDY for fake food! -Aimee

A menagerie of foams!

For the radishes, I cut circles of the foam and painted the edges red while I held them in a stack between thumb and forefinger. 

For the fried tortillas, I cut triangles of the same foam and then gently warmed them with a heat gun. (I tossed them all in a small cardboard box to do this, as they will blow around a lot!) The heat gun melts them just enough to curl and round over the edges to look more like fried chips.

The most time consuming part was the dry time of painting the chips, I tinted Rosco Crystal Gel a light yellow base color and painted each chip. I let dry supported on toothpicks, and then I glazed them all with a wash of reddish brown. 

The garnishes were really fun as well, avocados carved from insulation foam and painted with tinted Crystal Gel. Wood shavings spray painted green for green onions. Crumbled styrofoam for cheese. Small bits of upholstery foam spray painted red and green for tomato and jalapeño. I used some real Chile flakes as well to help my paint look more like sauce! Also, the real cast iron skillet helps complete the illusion. 

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Thanks Katie!  These look awesome and I would 100% like to eat it all.  

Katie is a part of INCITE Colorado and you can learn about them here!

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Hammy Sammies aka Hammy New Year!

Materials: Upholstery Foam, Liquid Latex, Microfoam, Fake Tomatoes, Jaxsan

 Hey, all. Sorry that it's been a bit since my last post. I've had a perfect storm of three big shows at work, one freelance show on the side, and the holidays! Boy Howdy! Well, I'm two weeks away from opening one big show and one side show, and the holidays are....well, tomorrow they'll be over. So, here I am, bringing you another fun and exciting post about food fakery.

These Dagwood sandwiches were fun to make because they are meant to look a little over sized and proppy. They are for our upcoming production of 'The 39 Steps,' a humorous take on the Hitchcock film of the same name.  We're not going for realism here, we're going for humorously over sized,  fake sandwiches that are obviously made of ham and tomatoes.

The bread is foam and latex.  I cut out a vague bread shape from upholstery foam and coated the 'loaf' with several coats of liquid latex. After a quick spritz of Design Master for that oven browned look, I sliced up the loaf with my trusty Olfa knife.

Next up were the tomatoes.  Commercially produced fake fruit and veggies can sometimes be a good starting point for built food. In this case, I had fake tomatoes with foam cores.  I sliced the tomatoes (as you would a real tomato) which gave me the correct size and shape of a tomato slice, as well as a finished edge. Then, I coated the foam with flex glue, and painted the surface with acrylics to look like a tomato slice.

The ham is made from microfoam packing material coated with Jaxsan and painted with Design Master and acrylics. I spray painted the pieces with Dusty Rose, and then painted the edges with Burnt Sienna for that ham skin look.

Hehe. Ham stack.

Once all of the components were created, it was time to assemble!  I wanted these sandwiches to be as sturdy as possible, so I stitched them together in layers with nylon thread, after using green glue to hold the folded ham slices together.  Since I didn't want the stitches to show on the top and bottom slices of bread, I used rubber cement to glue the last pieces of bread on.

Now, if these sandwiches were supposed to be more realistic, I would have done a few things differently. First, I would have worked to make the bread look more convincing by trying different types of foam and adjusting the color. My approach to the ham would have been similar, though I would have taken more time with the paint job to make it look more realistic. Perhaps I would have pepper crusted the edges.  The tomatoes? Well......thinner slices and fewer of them.  Also, I would have added some more details. These sandwiches are rather cartooney. Some purchased fake lettuce goes a long way towards adding texture and interest to a fake sandwich.  Also, I would have dressed them on a plate with chips or potato salad,  something to help with context and realism.

As it is, the sandwiches are pretty funny. I had a good time walking around the shop with them before they were assembled and letting them explode and bounce all over the floor.  All in all, not a bad way to start the year in the Fake-n-Bake kitchen.  Coming up soon (most likely) a floofy graduation cake, Garibaldi biscuits, and the epic tale of life casting, failed materials, and a fast approaching deadline.

NOM NOM NOM

So, from me and the sandwiches, Hammy New Year. May your 2011 be filled with excellent food, both real and fake! Happy propping!

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Pickled Herring with Onions

Materials: Paraffin Wax, Candle Pigments, Microfoam, Fake herbs

This is one of the dishes that I made for the engagement party scene in 'Cabaret.'  In the scene, the counter is covered in party food; punch, sausages, St. Lucia rolls, fruit bowls, and pickled herring.  This pickled herring is made of a material newly discovered to me- paraffin wax.  Well, okay, I knew about paraffin wax before, but the idea of using it to replicate translucent foods is on the newer side. My boss suggested it last season for a smoked salmon platter that was on the list, and I decided to use it for this project.  The paraffin is nice because it is easy to carve with an olfa knife or carving tools, easy to tint with candle coloring, has a great translucence for things like fish, and you can buy it at the grocery store. Also, you can melt it down for re-use.

 I started by finding a few research photos.

This is one of them.

 

 

 

 

Next, I went out and bought some candle pigments. Okay, I asked our shopper to go out and buy me some candle pigments. Candle colors come in packets of small, intensely colored wax diamonds, like tiny diamond shaped crayons.  I bought my pigments from a candle supply company in my neighborhood which I will now shamelessly plug. Not only can you find candle and soap making supplies at The Candlemaker, you'll also be dealing with a small, local and web-based business run by a delightful woman that boosts tax revenues in my neighborhood. Also, she's really nice.  Please check her website out for all of your candle making needs.  Again, that's www.thecandlemaker.com

Okay, the shameless promoting is over for now. After buying the pigments, I carved the paraffin wax into pickled herring shapes. I carved the shapes with my trusty Olfa knife, and used a clay carving tool to smooth them.

Like this.

 Once the shapes were carved, it was time to add some color.  Using a makeshift double boiler (tin cans in a bath of boiling water) I made three wax washes; one yellow, one gray, and one black.  The yellow was just to cut the bright white color of the wax, the gray and black were to give the appearance of skin.  Keeping the colored wax warm and liquid, I used acid brushes to paint it onto the pieces of "herring."

Like this!

 Once the herring was finished, it needed some garnish to make it believable.  The dill was easy, I just pulled some plastic fish tank plants out of our stock.  The onions were more fun. I cut microfoam packing material into thin strips, and glued it into rings using rubber cement.

Neat, huh?

Once I had herring, onions, and dill in hand, I just had to glue them down. I used a combination of hot glue and rubber cement to do this. Turns out, rubber cement doesn't stick to wax, and hot glue doesn't stick to microfoam. Fun, no?  Anyway, once it was all together, I was very happy with the effect. 

Not too shabby.

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Sham ala Keli

This lovely ham is yet another picnic prop for 'Albert Herring.' Crafted by our resident sculptor Keli Sequoia, and painted by our talented painters, this ham is a vision in foam and flex glue.  The body of the ham is carved from bead foam, and the slices of ham are microfoam sheeting- that thin, translucent foam used for packaging.  I believe the bone is made of bamboo. Keli did something very clever here, which was to reinforce the edges of the ham slices with wire, allowing the slices to gracefully drape from the ham. The slices of ham were attached to the body with green glue, and the ham was coated with flex glue (I believe) before being painted. The final touch is the real cloves, which you can see Keli placing in the photos. Well done, Keli, another beautiful prop from a talented lady!

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