Hot Pour Vinyl Fishies

Materials:  Hot Pour Vinyl, Plaster, Vaseline, Acrylic Paints, Mold Box (wood or other), Modeling Clay
 
The mold for these herring was made for our production of 'The 39 Steps', by our clever and hilarious intern, Jess Smith, with guidance from yours truly.

Intern shown actual size.

 It is a simple two part plaster mold made from a fake fish that we had in stock.  See! Casting and faux foodstuffs in one convenient post!

The Original.

The first thing that Jess did was to determine where the seam of the mold wanted to be. With a symmetrical piece like a fish, this is a pretty easy task, especially when the fish you are using is a cast piece that already has a seam!  Using a wooden mold box, Jess built up clay around one side of the fish, taking up the space that one half of the mold would eventually fill.  Before applying a release agent, she built up clay near the mouth to form a pour spout, and carved a trough with a carving tool to act as a registration.  (A registration is made to keep the two pieces of the mold in the correct alignment.)  Once the clay dam was complete, Jess used petroleum jelly (good ol' Vaseline) to coat the clay dam, the wooden sides of the box, and the fish. This acted as a release agent so that the plaster would not stick to any of the surfaces and prevent the mold from being removed.  Jess then poured the plaster into the first side of the mold, and allowed it to cure.

Here you can see the first half of the mold and the clay dam that has been removed.

Once the plaster set, Jess removed the whole thing from the mold box (some disassembly required), flipped it, and settled in back into the mold box, plaster side down. She then removed the clay dam, built the second half of the pour spout, and gave the whole shebang another coat of petroleum jelly before pouring side two.  Once side two was poured, she removed the mold from the box, removed the fish from the mold, and gave both pieces of the mold a good scrubbing to remove the release agent.

See the registration trough/ridge?

The next step was to pour the castings.  We used pigmented hot pour vinyl to do this (see last weeks post here).  After securing the mold halves together, Jess heated the vinyl until it melted, and poured it into the mold.  The vinyl itself isn't sticky when it's dry, so no release agent was needed.  Then, once the vinyl had cooled, we popped it out of the mold, trimmed the sprue from the pour spout and painted the fishies silver with acrylic paint.  We did try to brush silver bronzing powder into the mold before casting, and while it looked good, the powder came off on our hands too easily when handling the herring- so we went with the paint instead.

The best thing about these fishies is their floppy quality.

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Thanks for your patience!

Hey all, you may have noticed that I haven't posted yet this week. Please accept my apologies. There is a lot of bad, bad business going down in my home state right now (as well as with my car) and it has had me a bit distracted.  Not a good excuse? Maybe, but it's the one I have. And don't worry, I'll put up that post on Hot Pour Fishies tomorrow, cross my heart. Happy Propping to all, and peace and safety to all of the people in the world right now who need it.
-Anna

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Materials Monday- Hot Pour Vinyl



Beef in Hot Pour Vinyl Gravy.

Hot pour vinyl! If you've been a faithful follower of this blog, you've probably noticed that I like to use a product called Hot Pour Vinyl on a lot of my food products. You also probably need to get out more. It's one of my favorite products because of it's translucency and shine- you can get really faithful representations of things like gravy, pie filling and cheese sauce. It's also nice and jiggly.
Hot pour vinyl is the same stuff that fake worm fishing lures are made out of. It comes in a liquid form, in clear or white, and is set by heating it to 350 Degrees, and then cooling it. It can be poured into a mold, or drizzled on top of fake food as a sauce, or anything else that your heart desires. I’ve used it in plaster molds, and I believe it can also be poured into silicone or urethane molds as well, though I have no experience with that. It can be re-melted and reused many times, you can put sawdust or other texturizers in it for a chunkier look if you wish.

You can buy plastic pigments to dye it, and they’re available in a wide range of colors. I’ve had mixed luck with painting it with acrylic, though I know the Guthrie had good luck using acrylic paint on some cast meat for a butcher shop scene this season.   I think the luck has to do with how well you set the stuff, if it isn't heated fully before cooling, it seems not to work quite as well.

The downside is that it’s hard to get it to stick to anything, and that it can leach some oily residue over time- so it doesn’t hold up real well in our warm and muggy basement prop storage. The best part is that it is shiny and translucent- so you can make very convincing sauces with it and jiggly, so you can make hilarious jiggly food with it.

The manufacturer recommends heating it in an oil double boiler, but as that sounds terrifying to me (another prop shop I know of had a spill with theirs, ick), and I usually mix mine in small batches, I just do it over low(gradually increasing) heat, and stir constantly. It’s pretty stinky, so better to do it in a ventilated area.

We buy ours here:
Burman Industries (search for Hot Pour)
and you can buy the pigments (M-F plastic color, it’s called) that we use here:
Fishing World- Plastic Pigments
(though I do not have personal experience with this company)


I'll post a step by step next week on some hot pour fishies, but in the mean time, here are some things I've done with the hot pour. Happy Propping!



Leftover cheese on platter.




Cabbage Pie



"Something Brown made of Cabbage"





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Mr. Laurel's Meat Pies

In this season's production of 'Laurel and Hardy,' Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy had to chow down on a plate of meat pies. Well, if your goal is to ask your actor to eat something greasy, crumbly, messy, and high calorie every night, then a meat pie is right up your alley! Your actor can pack on the pounds and your wardrobe staff can start scraping grease. Now, if you don't want your poor performers and costumers to hate the meat pie bit, you can always sub in these delightful meat free pies.  This is one of my shortest posts ever, because these pies are really, really easy to make. Here we go:

Step 1) Buy some of that pastry dough in a tube.
Step 2) Make it into pie shapes.
Step 3) Bake it. (Bake it at the recommended temperature until it looks golden brown.)

Ta-da!  We opted to make a massive batch during tech, freeze them, and re-thaw them a few at a time- and it seemed to work beautifully. I won't claim that the calories issue was completely solved, but it sure beat a pocket of ground beef every night. Also, our savvy director blocked the scene so that only two of the pies were eaten each night. These two edible pies sat atop a towering pyramid of foam meat pies, so the joke still had its punch.

That's it! There you go! Meatless Meat pies! Easy as.....yup, pie.

Happy Propping!

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Materials Monday- Jaxsan

So, today I'd like to do a little rave about one of my all time favorite products, Jaxsan 600. Before I start this article, I should mention that I am in no way affiliated with the fine people at Plastics Coating Corporation, I just love their stuff!   If you've spent any time around me in a prop shop, you've probably heard me refer to Jaxsan as 'the magic prop goo' or constantly suggest it for every type of project imaginable.  What makes it so great you say? Well, let me tell you!

Within this bucket lies magic beyond your imagination! Well, actually,magic in direct proportion to your imagination. Still, not too shabby.

 Jaxsan is a great coating. It can be troweled or brushed on (there is also a spray grade, but I haven't used that one yet.) You can thin it with water, tint it (with acrylic, Cal-Tints, etc.), and mix in textural materials like sawdust.  It will coat wood, metal, fabric, foam rubber, and insulation foam. When it dries (air cure) it is strong, flexible, waterproof, fire resistant, and paintable.  If you stipple it on, paint it black, and then hit the points with silver Rub n' Buff, it looks like cast iron. If you schmooey it onto microfoam and paint it, it looks like sliced meat (see the ham and beef photos below.)

Now, there are a few downsides. The stuff isn't cheap, but for small applications it goes a long way. Also, if you're trying to get a smooth finish, this might not be the stuff for you. It's got some texture on it's own, and you're not going to get a satiny finish with it. Once it's dry there's no sanding or carving possible.

Now, as Levar Burton used to say on 'Reading Rainbow,' you don't have to take my word for it. Laura Salvaggio over at Theater Helper has posted a good overview of Jaxsan 600. Click here to read it.
Also, the fine folks at Plastics Coating Corporation have a known history of sending samples to theater professionals.  They've figured out that we use it, even if they aren't entirely sure what we do with it.  You can visit their website by clicking here.

Where to buy it?  Well, you can buy it directly from the company, you can buy it from RoseBrand, or you can look around online- a few other places do carry it.

I have some examples of Jaxsan use in my fake food work below (you can click on the caption to see the full post if you like):

Fauxsciutto

Strawberry Cream Cake ala JT

Sugared Pansy Cake ala Oona

Hammy Sammies

Roast Beef

 So how about you? What do you use Jaxsan for? Send photos!!!!  If I like the photos, I'll post them, and you can have the prestige of having your work displayed on a blog that is read by tens of people daily!

Happy Propping!

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Something Brown made of Cabbage

Hello all! Thank you for being patient with me lately as the winter has stood in the way of my posting to this blog!  The blog has been getting quite a bit of action lately, so thank you to all who are spreading the word.  This week, I'd like to bring you something truly disgusting- and I hope you'll enjoy it!

Last season we put on a production called "The Government Inspector."  It's a pseudo-period piece that takes place in Czarist Russia.  We find our protagonist at the inn. He has spent all of his money, and is begging the innkeepers wife to allow him to charge one more meal to his account.  She offers him a variety of dreadful things (including cabbage pie and 'something brown made of cabbage' ) from which he chooses a bowl of soup.  Only the bowl of cabbage soup (with chicken feathers) is eaten on stage, but the rest of the menu is pulled out for display.

The soup was a bowl of chicken broth containing a preset feather, but the cabbage pie and something brown were up to me. 

Mmmmm. Delicious. Who wouldn't want to eat that?

 For the cabbage pie, I started with some hot pour vinyl that I found in our kitchen. Our previous craftsperson had made up a batch of the vinyl with sawdust mixed into it, and I liked the texture.  I re-melted the vinyl and poured it out onto a cookie sheet. Once it was cool, I used scissors to cut it into thin strips, like sauerkraut.  I made the crust from Great Stuff. I like to use it as pastry sometimes because it has interesting texture, and is strong and lightweight. I made a blob of it on a sheet of plastic, and cut it to shape when it was dry.  Before painting it, I gave it a coat of white glue so that the paint would stick 

As you can see from the photo, the pie is sewn together. I still have not found an adhesive that works with hot pour vinyl, especially when it is in such small pieces The stitches were not apparent onstage, and allowed the towering pie slice a bit of wiggle.

The 'something brown' was made with hot pour vinyl also, but I wanted it to have a different base.  Under this pile of vinyl sauerkraut and sauce, there are several patties made from baked salt dough and spray painted with Glossy Wood Tone.  The result is a delightful "ewww" from most people who see it.  The hot pour vinyl really gives it the oily sheen that terribly greasy food needs, and the different tones and textures seem to remind people of the worst casserole of their lives.  Mission accomplished!

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Serve Something Spectacular

This weekend, I was shopping with a friend, and we stopped into a local thrift store.  While surveying the offerings, a stack of magazines caught my eye, and I was immediately shoveling handfuls of old cooking serials into my arms.  I would have guessed that these magazines were from the 60's or 70's, but I suppose I'm not a good guesser of period food styles yet.  These phenomenal booklets were published in 1985, and offer photographic evidence of some pretty ridiculous and unbelievable dishes.  While it's true that these dishes are not fake food, but real recipes, it's hard to believe that some of them could ever exist.  I'm going to share some of these photos with you today, I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.

Note: Please note the foods that are 'Gelee' or covered in Aspic.  Aspic is a savory gelatin glaze; think meat flavored jello.

Breast of Turkey and Sliced Tongue in Aspic and Pate-Stuffed Chicken Breasts en Gelee.  Yum!

Poached Fish with Cucumber Scales

Turkey Breast Galantine

Pear Feuilletes with Caramel

Roast of Beef en Gelee

Vanilla-Ice-Cream Bombe Surprise (The surprise is grapes, apricot jam, and kirsch)

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CAKE!

Materials:  Insulation foam, Acrylic Caulk, Design Master Spray, Acrylic Paint, Hot Glue, Fake Flowers

Here is another  Fake-n-Cake for your enjoyment! This one is for the graduation party scene in Renaissance Theaterwork's upcoming production of ' Crumbs From the Table of Joy '  The show is a memory play, and so certain props are embellished to show their importance in the main character's  memory.  One of these props is her graduation cake, made by the bakery where her father works.

This is another of my standard foam and caulk cakes.  I used Ivory colored Design Master to get the color, and used hot glue to attach fake flowers.  The one misstep was adhering the two tiers together before icing. I should have iced them separately, allowed them to dry, attached them, and then applied the decorative icing.  Ah well, hindsight is 20/20.

If you'd like to learn more about decorating fake cakes, you can watch the videos from my first cake posts here:
Cake Tutorials

and here:
One More Cake Tutorial

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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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Holiday Pies ala Sarah and Anna

Well, it's still Christmas Carol season over here at the Fake-n-Bake kitchen. The show is open, but the standard little repairs and maintenance are coming over to the shop. You know, a $400 piece of electrical equipment was installed incorrectly and fried, the dead body's lead shot is leaking out of it's shroud, the usual stuff. No one has caught on fire yet (this year) so we're still pretty hum-drum on notes. 

This week, I want to bring you two examples of salt dough pies from two very different Christmas productions.  The first set of pies are from our production last season of "The Seafarer." The second act of this play centers around a Christmas day card game between a group of bachelors. Of the men at the table one is blind, one is playing for his soul, and the only man who isn't an alcoholic is actually Satan. So, obviously, they have some very festive refreshments including smoked salmon and store bought mince pies.  By the time we see the men, they have devoured most of their treats, and we see only the remnants of their Christmas feast.

 I started out by researching mince pies, it turns out that they are a British tradition, and that frozen and packaged mince pies are readily available. We purchased a package of little mince pies from an online British Grocer for research, and also to use the packaging as a prop.  

The pies themselves are made of salt dough. You can find all sorts of salt dough recipes online to fit your taste, but basically, salt dough is salt, flour, and water. Thin sculptures can often be air dried, but baking tends to be faster.  I mixed up a batch of salt dough, and sculpted it around some 1" long cut-offs of curtain rod. I just wanted to make sure that the dough wasn't too thick to dry out thoroughly.  I used a muffin pan to give me a good bottom shape, and cut out little Christmas trees for the top of each pie. I then baked the little pies at 250 degrees F for about an hour, or until they seemed to be dried completely.

For paint, I just used watered down acrylic paints, and then coated the pies with flex glue or acrylic medium ( I don't remember which.)  Though there are six pies, only two made it out onto the plates. On one, I broke the pie open and filled it with hot pour vinyl, as if it were half eaten. Do I have a photo of this hilarious half eaten pie? Yes, but I can't find it. Sorry about that.

Sarah's Christmas Carol pies are also made out of salt dough. In fact, her pies are entirely salt dough, with no filler in the middle. This seemed to work out just fine, though the dough did seem to contract some during the baking process.  The edges of the dough pulled up just slightly from the pans, but not enough to be problematic. 

Sarah had a much nicer plan to color her pies than I did. She used amber shellac on the pies which gave them a delightful golden brown color and a sealer coat in one go.  She did use multiple coats of the shellac in the middle and along the edges to give the color some depth and make the pies look like they were fresh from the oven.  You can see a photo of Sarah with her festive pies up at the top of the blog. Darling, aren't they?

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A Christmas Carol Coffee Cake

Materials: Great Stuff, Tissue Paper, White Glue, Design Master, Acrylic Caulk, Gloss Medium, Fake Holly

So, is everyone feeling festive yet? If you work in a theater in America, chances are 64% that you are about to open your Christmas show. (Statistic not based on fact) Whether it be 'A Christmas Carol' (yay, public domain!), 'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever', a Nativity play, or some multi-denominational holiday extravaganza, you're probably picking glitter and pine needles out of your clothes at the end of each day. Well, here in the Fake-n-Bake kitchen, we are no exception.  Now, I feel like I should say that I love our beautiful production of 'A Christmas Carol,' but one does tire a bit when most of the notes involve bow fluffing and holly gluing. 

This prop is a rebuild of a smaller coffee cake that wasn't reading well.  I started by making a ring of Great Stuff foam. Now, I'm having a bit of a falling out with Great Stuff right now (See upcoming posts on life casting traumas) but I like using it for baked goods because it is lightweight, readily available, and it carves well. 

Once the Great Stuff was cured, I trimmed away the funky bits to smooth the shape a bit.  Then, I did a papier mache treatment over the foam, to give it a more 'pastry like' surface to paint.  I used tissue paper and white glue for this.

Once the papier mache was dry, I painted the cake with Design Master spray paints. The Honey Stain and the Glossy Wood Tone worked to give the cake that fresh baked golden look that looks so good on stage.  The icing is made from a mixture of Acrylic Caulk, Acrylic Gloss Medium, and Water.  I drizzled it over the top. The first time, I put on way too much and had to wash it off. The next time was a little bit better, though I would have liked to have achieved skinnier drips, so I'll have to practice that in the future. I also could have spent a bit more time and attention to a more symmetrical coffee cake, but as my real coffee cakes usually turn out asymmetrical also, I thought I'd let it go.



Then, I glued it to the plate, and hot glued a metric buttload of fake holly and fruit picks to it, and WAH-LAH! Christmas like Charles Dickens intended it!

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Meat Buns aka St. Lucia Rolls

Materials:  Upholstery Foam, Liquid Latex, Acrylic Paint, Sawdust, Flex Glue

These are another prop from our recent production of Cabaret.  As I've mentioned before, it was my job to create a smorgasbord of (inedible) German treats for the engagement party scene.  I had recently seen some beautiful prop rolls created out of latex coated upholstery foam, and so I wanted to give the technique a try. I did some poking around to find photos of German foods, and I found a photo of some beautiful rolls over on familyoven.com  Now, this might be a good time for a disclaimer. I cheated a bit, St. Lucia buns are actually Swedish.

Swedish, actually. Don't tell my boss.

Making these buns is very straightforward. First, use an Olfa knife (or other utility blade) to carve upholstery foam into the appropriate shape. 

After carving the rolls, give them a few coats of liquid latex. Once dry, use some thinned acrylic paint to give them some color. I mixed my paint with matte medium.

 

Finally, stuff the little divots in the buns. I used a combination of sawdust, flex glue, and acrylic paint.  Once they are dried, put them in a lovely basket, and put them onstage!

Pretty easy, huh?

The only thing that I don't like about this technique is that it is very difficult to get the rolls to be nice and smooth.  Perhaps I just need more practice, or perhaps I'm missing something. Does anyone have a surefire way to get upholstery foam to carve smoothly? If so, please comment below, I'd be happy to hear it!

Did you like this post? For another delightful type of roll, visit the following link:
http://tinyurl.com/tastyrolls

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Sarah's Festive Balls- Sugarplums/Sweetmeats

Materials: Celluclay, Food Coloring, Spray Paint, Cork, Spray Snow, White Glue, Garnish

Well, the time has come once more for our beloved production of 'A Christmas Carol' to be dragged from the filthy warehouse, lovingly cleaned and pieced together, and presented as a gift to the whole city. But, alas, this year, a few of the props needed special attention. The sweetmeats. Yes, the faithful sweetmeats that have served us, lo, these six long years, have seen their better days.  It is time for a new platter of sweetmeats to grace our stage, and who better to confect these Victorian beauties than one of my favorite propsters, Sarah Heck?

Sarah is my co-crafter at the Rep, and she's a propster of the highest caliber. She specializes in fake taxidermy, leatherwork, and other crafts; she is a gentlewoman, a scholar, and a judge of fine whiskies. Also, I envy her for being tall. There, I said it.

But enough kissing up to Sarah, let's talk a little bit about sweetmeats.  Sweetmeats, according to my favorite reference website, http://www.foodtimeline.org/ , are a British term for confectionary. Basically, what we call candies.  Confections back in Dickens' time were mostly very sweet mish-mashes of honey, nuts, and preserved fruits.  One of these types of sweetmeat is the famous sugar plum, which according to Saveur Magazine, look like this:

Sarah started these sugarplums by making round lumps of Celluclay colored with brown food coloring and allowed them to dry.  Celluclay is nice because it is lightweight and paintable.

Next, she put pieces of rolled cork (the kind you buy to make cork board) into a blender.  Once the cork was minced to a desirable size, she used spray paint to add some color to batches of the chopped cork.  She dipped each of the Celluclay lumps into white glue, and rolled them in the cork schnibbles. Once the cork dried, she coated each sugarplum in white glue to seal and bind the cork even further.

Once all the glue had dried again, she dusted the top of each with spray-on snow, a sweet substitute for powdered sugar.

Once the 'sugar' was dried, there was nothing left but to pile them dramatically on a wooden platter, and garnish them with holly.

Awwwwwwwwww.

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