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!

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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!

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

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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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Turkey Leg

Ah, the turkey leg. What would Ye Olde Renaissance Faire be without one?  And, of course, what would the Ghost of Christmas Present be without one? So felt our director of "A Christmas Carol" this season.  The request was for a turkey leg, partially eaten, that could be removed from a dressed plate which is part of a bedazzling display of festive foods.  Our version of A Christmas Carol is in it's sixth year, so my involvement in the bedazzling display was limited to gluing on stray berries and shuttling stray glitter back to its intended home. However, the turkey leg was a new addition this year, and so the crafting fell to me.  Before I begin, I think it is fair to mention that our Carol is performed in a large proscenium house, and not in our usual, more intimate thrust space.  The aesthetic of the props in Carol is more theatrical than the work we usually do, true to life detail is often wasted in this space.

First things first, research images as usual. What surprised me the most about the photos of the turkey legs is what a bright pink center most of them have. I expected to see more of the whitish gray that you tend to see in breast meat, but these guys are bright pink.

 I started with the bone, which was simply a piece of hardwood dowel that ran through the entire "leg." I whittled down the end to give it a bone-like appearance, and sanded away any splinters or sharp bits. In my experience, actors have dainty, soft hands, and they will find ANY imperfection in a prop and injure themselves on it.

The flesh of the turkey leg is made from upholstery foam. I cut a vaguely- turkey leg shaped chunk of foam on our table top bandsaw, cut that in half, and cut a groove down the center of each half for the bone. Using 3M Fastbond Contact Adhesive (commonly called Green Glue), I joined the foam together with the bone inside, sandwich style.  Next, I used my trusty Olfa knife to carve the foam into the shape of a turkey leg.

Once the carving was complete, I covered the foam with acrylic caulk. Acrylic caulk is a very good props coating as it can be colored by mixing in acrylic paint, is paintable when cured, and becomes tough and flexible when dry. It can also be smoothed with water before it dries. I happened to have some caulk that was already colored with fuschia paint, so I used that. I would recommend using caulk that is already tinted, as it made it easier to do the final paint job.

Once the caulk was dry, I painted.  The golden brown look of the skin was achieved with layer after layer of Glossy Wood Tone, the king of Design Master spray paints (trumpet fanfare).  I used acrylic paint and gloss medium to try to simulate the tissues in the bite, and did some shadowing on the bone as well. If this turkey leg was for one of our more intimate spaces, I would have done more as far as texture, possibly using hot glue to help with the gristly look where the bone meets the flesh.

Once the turkey leg was all dry, it was basically like a nerf turkey leg with a tough coating, so the best part of this project was walking around the shop hitting things with it.  Here in Milwaukee, we play with our food!

Links:
3M Fastbond Adhesive 30NF, AKA Green Glue
This is a great contact cement for joining foam. Remember, paint it onto both surfaces and allow to dry before adhering.

Olfa Knives and Tools 
I love these tools. The Utility L-1 is my go to knife for most jobs.

Design Master Woodtones 
I have yet to meet a prop shop that doesn't depend on these paints for many uses. Glossy Wood Tone is basically magic in a can. On the downside, the spray pattern is usually pretty uneven. Like all spray paints, these should be used with proper ventilation and respiratory protection.

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