Okra: I'm not sure if this plant grows everywhere, but here in East Tennessee, we have a weed that has yellow flowers and the leaves are heart-shaped and attached to the stem at the point of the heart - if you can find this plant, check out the seed pods - exact duplicates of okra in scale! They dry out easily - I use a little sealer on them after they're dry just to preserve them. A great addition to that miniature vegetable garden!

Sonia

Making Toast: I use Crayola's Model Magic for bread and toast. When I'm going to be cutting it, I make a long square loaf, about 4" long. After it has dried a while, I coat the outside with brown glass stain for the crust. I let that dry at least overnight before slicing. Be sure to use a sharp, sharp blade to cut it, otherwise it tears. If the slices aren't flat enough or thin enough for you, you can run them over sand paper or an emery board. Then, use ochre and brown pastels or chalk to "toast" the bread. Make a real piece of toast to study for the coloring.

Marsha Heeter

Milkshake: The milkshake is made out of Model Magic... just press some of it into the cup and pull one bit over the edge for the "drip." Push a straw (those little clear plastic ties that hold price tags onto clothing work great, or the bristle of a brush) into the milkshake before it dries, and texture the top with sandpaper a little. The cup is made from something found in the hardware store called a wire nut, it sells for less than 10 cents and comes in different colors and sizes.

I considered putting a little swirl of whipped cream and a cherry on top of the shake.

Celeste Ng

Flour & Sugar: For sugar I've used white sand (the kind that you buy in the craft store). Could you use baby powder or talc for flour?

Paula

Flour & Doughnuts: For flour, I just rubbed a piece of white chalk on a piece of paper, voila, instant flour. For the doughnuts, I used air drying clay and rolled it out to just a little short of 1/8". Cut them out using a pen barrel for the outside and an empty pen refill to cut the holes. Then when there are dry, paint the tops and bottoms of each with a golden brown, and a strip around the middle a cream color. You can make jam busters or bismarks by not cutting out the inside and rounding them a little bit on top. Don't forget to put that little spot where the filling oozed out just a little. Want to make one with a bite out of it, use the pen refill to cut out a hole in the side. Paint the inside a yellow-cream for the doughnut and the same with the jam buster with the jelly filling showing too. If you want to make cream puffs, roll out your dough about 1/16" and cut it with the pen barrel. Paint to match the color of the ones in the store. Put some of the snow that is used for ceramics in-between two of the circles so that it squeezes out just a little. You can glaze the doughnuts chocolate (a little brown), maple glaze I clear (clear acrylic glaze).

Sandi

Flour: I know that professional mini food makers in GB use talc to represent flour. They say using real flour looks too bulky in mini, and that talc looks more realistic. I assume that talc smell goes away.

Helen

Flour & Doughnuts: Have you considered using baking powder for your flour? It is finer than flour and I've never found bugs in mine! (Thank Joanne Swanson for that tip; I read it in Nutshell News.) I generally take the coward's way out when it comes to donuts and use Cheerios or some other "O" shaped cereal. I use paint for icing - chocolate, strawberry, or plain. After I have them piled on the plate, I coat them with clear nail polish. I haven't tried the powdered sugar kind; I think the baking powder would melt in the paint - or bubble up, worse yet!

Dani

Flour & Sugar: Concerning the flour and sugar issue: I use baby powder for flour and fine white craft sand for sugar.

Laurie

Sugar: For sugar on donuts, use very fine glitter for granulated sugar, or sand for cinnamon sugar.

Marsha Heeter

Flour & Sugar: Talcum powder makes good flour and salt has small crystals and substitutes for sugar (salt doesn't go "bad" does it?).

Liz

Flour & Sugar: I try to stay clear of organic stuff as much as possible - I'm always nervous about critters or just decomposing after so many years... we want our minis to be passed down! I'd use talc (baby powder) for flour, and try mixing some ultra fine glitter with white sand. (The sand would be called "play sand" here in the US - clean stuff for sand boxes, or white craft sand in the hobby shop). Salt might work for sugar too, but if you are in a very humid location it could react to glues or furniture surfaces.

Beverly Michie

Flour & Sugar: Baking Soda is good for flour, and sprinkled as snow on porches; also for powdered sugar on donuts and pastries.

Maria

Cake decorating supplies: The address is http://www.hankypankycrafts.com

This is the site for ordering cake decorating and supplies. Have never ordered these, but am seriously thinking of trying them.

Rachel

Wedding Cake: I, too, would use Crayola's model magic. I use acrylic paint to tint it the proper color (very few cakes are pure white). If you don't have cake pans the size you want, you can make a slab the thickness you want, and then cut out the layers using various sizes of tubes, bottle lids, etc. You can cut the layers either before or after it dries. Once it has dried, assemble and frost it. Then you can cut out slices, and they have a cake-like texture - better than any polymer clay. For the frosting, I'd use acrylic gel medium mixed with acrylic paint , or if you want it not so white, you can use some of the dimensional paint that's made to decorate clothing.

Marsha Heeter

Wedding Cake: I use an air dry paper clay tinted with acrylic paints for the layers. This has the best texture I have found for the cake part. You can use cake pans or cut with a cutter to various sizes! Let them dry first before you ice! You can do several things for the frosting, but I think the easier one for a beginner is the dimensional paints used for decorating clothing. If you want an edging that is really simple, you can often manage those with a pin as the paint starts to harden a bit! If you want a fancier edging, I would try it out of Fimo and bake it before I put the frosting on the layers and then position the trim before the frosting dries so it will hold together. Silicon Chalking is another possible frosting and it does not shrink like the paint does either. But the paint does not shrink much - just use it a little thicker than you want the frosting to be. Let it all dry very well before attempting to cut it. Use a very sharp razor blade and pray! Be sure your cut it straight, that is the main thing. If you slant slightly you can trim off a bit more usually!

Laura Redman

Lettuce leaves: You can cut the rough leaf shape from pale green florist's tape and then stretch the edges of the leaves until they are irregular and wavy.

Lesley

Lettuce leaves: I work in either Cernit (my medium of choice) or Fimo to make my lettuces. Barbara and Heather will be my witnesses here, but I manage to get it so thin you can actually see right through it - no, not through the holes in it!

I roll my polymer clay to about 1mm thick. Use a rose petal cutter (one of my many cake decorating goodies now that no longer make cakes!) to cut the outer 7 leaves. I then coat the palm of one hand with a thin layer of talc, place the 'petal' on my hand, and using a Jem ball tool (again from cake decorating), very gently start rolling and thinning the outer edge of the petal, gradually working inwards to stretch and frill the leaf. It is necessary to periodically dip the ball tool into a tiny amount of talc to prevent it from sticking. I use a paint palette to rest the leaves in and use a very tiny dot of tacky glue to join the very tip of the leaves where they overlap at the centre. Once those 7 leaves are done, I do 5 more the same way, but cup them gently in the middle when adding into the centre of the previous lettuce "flower." Do another 3 petals, cupping even more firmly. Finally, I roll a thin sausage of clay about 1.5 cm long, and frill one long edge of that, in the same way I frill the petals. This I roll up carefully, trim the inside edge if needed, and fix into place with a spot of glue. I then use a palette knife to very gently lift the lettuce out of the paint palette, place it onto quilt batting on my baking tray and bake as per instructions for the polymer clay used. End result, beautiful, delicate butter lettuce.

It takes a bit of practice to get the frilling right. The whole secret being to prevent the ball tool sticking to the clay. I don't like using a metal ball tool as I find it has a greater tendency to tear the leaf as I work. Don't use too much talc - it will make the clay crumbly. The batting does not melt or catch alight or any other such disastrous thing in the oven, and supports the lettuce beautifully. No flattening or collapsing of the leaves, and no shiny baked spots.

Karin in South Africa

Lettuce leaves: I recently tried, with some good results, using the plastic snow flakes for lettuce, after seeing them from another source. I dyed them with green paste food coloring - either stir in a container or shake in a bag. I also tried mixing yellow with it to get different shades of green. These would look good in a tossed salad, or anyplace you need lettuce that isn't a whole head.

Connie

Lettuce leaves: I make lettuce leaves by using 2 small pieces of fimo (medium green and white), squeeze lightly together, do not blend very much, than roll out paper thin, then gently pick it up and tear off many tiny little pieces and put on pan to bake. You may want to roll a few if they did not crinkle enough in the pulling off.

Kathleen

Lettuce leaves:: For cheap and easy lettuce leaves try "flaked rice." I have had a packet for years and if I am wanting loose lettuce leaves I use these to great effect. They will take acrylic paints and if you paint a paler shade all over the leaf and then shade the edge with a darker shade you will have realism. Hint: don't water down your paint with too much water or the lettuce leaves look really wilted!

Judy in NZ