Some people search their whole lives for the meaning of life; I, however, have been on a tireless quest for the perfect miniature ice cream scoop–to each their own. The texture of scooped ice cream is tricky to achieve in polymer clay, and I’ve tried using various tools to recreate it without much luck.
Today, though, I decided to sit down, photo of real ice cream in hand, and sculpt until I was satisfied. And to ensure that I never have to go through this process again, I cast a mold of the resultant “perfect” scoop so I can recreate it whenever I want (and without having to charge something along the lines of $40 for a pair of ice cream earrings to recoup my time were I to do this by hand for every scoop).
I’ll be outlining the process in detail in a future summer foods tutorial, but in the meantime, you can make your own perfect scoops with this flexible silicone mold. The scoop made from this mold is just shy of 1/2″ in diameter. I made it for food jewelry pieces, not 1/12 scale dollhouse ice cream, but there is a great deal of variation in the size of real ice cream scoops, so you could get away with using it for dollhouse projects as well. I will be working on a slightly smaller scoop later this week, so if you need a tinier scoop be on the lookout in my shop.
In the photo below, you can see a scoop straight from the mold on the right. The scoop on the left was given a little bit of extra texture after being released from the mold. To do the same in your projects, simply use a needle tool to tease the clay in various spots along the “ruffled” bottom edge.
