Doing Some Mini Food Repair

One of my customers had a Woo and Locke magnet that had seen better days, thanks to some rather aggressive flour beetles. She wanted to see if I could remove the food and replace it with polymer clay foods. After several attempts that threatened serious damage to the Chinese takeout container that the food was glued to, I decided to start from scratch.

The old piece is on the right; my new version is on the left.

First of all, I designed a new takeout container, which I printed out on white card stock. You can download my printable for the container here. I used a bone folder to get nice creases as I assembled the box, and an even layer of paste on the tabs secured the side walls together.

I didn’t want to fill the entire container with noodles, as that would have been a huge waste of clay (and made for a very heavy magnet), so I cut out a square of foam core and glued it about half an inch from the top of the container. Think of it almost like a false ceiling, only in this case, it’s more like a false floor for the noodles. 🙂

Then, it was time to make the noodles. You can get detailed instructions on mixing up realistic clay colors for pasta in How to Sculpt Miniature Italian Foods. I piled the noodles into the container, molding them slightly against the sides of the box so as not to leave any noticeable gaps.

Little strips of tomato clay (I used the tomato skin I show you how to make in Dollhouse Miniature Valentine’s Day Foods) were cut into ragged squares and arranged on top of the noodles. And finally, I rolled out green clay mixed with translucent into little balls for the peas. A popsicle stick, sliced into thinner pieces, served as the chopsticks.

At this point, I needed to remove the noodles from the box to bake them, and I simply lifted them out with the help of a needle tool used to pick up one corner of the block of noodles. If you’re careful (and if you pressed the noodles together firmly enough), the entire thing will lift right out. I set this on my baking sheet, and made the fortune cookies. Learn how to make them in How to Sculpt Miniature Cookies.

The noodles and cookies were baked in a preheated oven for fifteen minutes, and then I used E6000 glue to attach the noodles to the box. I cut out a piece of rigid plastic (this was leftover from some packaging I’d saved), and glued this partially underneath the box to create a little platform on which to glue the cookies. Then, I used a little dab of glue to attach the fortune cookie messages, inserting them partly into the cookies.

To finish, I mixed polymer clay varnish with chalk pastels in orange, tan, and brown to create a sauce, and I brushed this over the noodles. Once that was dry, I finished with a coat of clear gloss. Then, I glued the magnet on the back, and voilà–the food magnet is done!