Making Polymer Clay Miniature Food for Barbie – Lessons Learned

Scale, Translucent, Texture and Shading:

Let me start by saying I don’t have a lot of experience as a miniature dollhouse artist. Most of you know that my primary focus is on making polymer clay beads and jewelry. But when my niece’s 5th birthday came up, I thought it would be fun to try my hand at crafting some miniature food for her Barbie’s.

I mean… I work with polymer clay everyday. Surely I’d be able to make some play food! Right? Easier said than done. It was harder than I expected, but still really fun! In today’s post, I’ll share with you some lessons learned.

Scale is Important: My most recent attempt at making miniature food ended up being cute, but out of proportion. The cupcakes were as big as the hamburger. And the jumbo cut fries must have come from one enormous potato! My mistake here, was making each of the play food items separately without comparing them to each other, or to an actual Barbie doll!

Translucent is Important: For the miniature food to look realistic, you need to mix in a lot of translucent with your colored clay, especially with fruits and vegetables. But even with bread, it is important. Without translucent, the dough looks flat and chalky.

Texture is Important: Crinkled and flattened out tinfoil is great for adding texture to a loaf of bread and to french fries. Coarse sandpaper works well too. Then, you can use a variety of finish coatings to make the pieces look as realistic as possible. For example, meat, lettuce and tomatoes should have a high gloss glaze. But the top of a bun looks better with a dusty coating of chalk.

Shaded Coloring is Important: I didn’t have the chalk pastels that other miniaturists use for dusting on color, so I tried some charcoal pencils. It looked good in the oven but came off after handling. So I added some alcohol ink like I did to the Anjou Pear Beads, and that worked quite nicely in a pinch. Would still like to get some chalk pastels since I love the look that is created with them.

Those were just a few lessons learned when making this play food. I love experimenting with different ideas and can see myself dabbling much more into the art of dollhouse miniatures and mini food. Looking forward to giving the food to my Niece. Hope she likes them!

Do you have an interest in learning how to make miniature food as charms and beads (or even radish earrings)? If so, what deigns would you like me to focus on?