Lettuce leaves: I make individual leaves of lettuce from FIMO. I put balls of various sizes onto a piece of plastic wrap no wider than my pasta machine. To get leaves to use as individual leaves (as opposed to leaves you are going to tear in pieces for a salad) the ball of FIMO should be about the size of a seed bead. I roll this through the pasta machine until I get to the finest setting. Then I take a paper towel piece and roll it through with the plastic. If the leaves aren't thin enough, I'll put another layer of paper towel under and roll again. (Some paper towels are thicker than others.) I then put the piece of plastic wrap on a ceramic tile and bake it. The plastic wrap shrinks and wrinkles and I get lettuce leaves that look very natural. It is sometimes a chore to pull the leaves out from the remains of the plastic wrap, but it's worth it.

Marsha Heeter

Mini Soufflé Dishes: As long as you aren't going to be baking in these, try good old creamer containers. (I wonder if the creamer container industry knows how many of their products end up in doll houses?) I have tried this method using a blade and it doesn't work. However, turn the creamer comtainer upside down on your work table, brace a SHARP pencil on something suitable, and slowly spin the container to make a cutting line on the container. You can cut it with sharp scissors once it's marked. If you cut close to the bottom of the container you have a tart pan. Cut a little farther up and it's a soufflé dish. By cutting closer to the rim, you have a lampshade to paint to match your decor.

NOTE: What you use as a BASE to support the pencil depends upon the height of your creamer container and where you need to mark it. A single or double thickness of foamcore or a jar lid will work well, and you can lay the pencil flat or point it down.

Dani

Lettuce: Tear green tissue paper. To add a variegated look, touch the tissue with a tiny amount of water (not enough to completely soak the piece). This lettuce can be used on a sandwich, or make a salad by adding onions sliced from a straw-shaped coffee stirrer and cherry tomatoes made from beads or Fimo.

The tip is courtesy of Als Minis and she has lots of other neat stuff on her web site: http://members.aol.com/alsminis/index.html

Paula

Realistic Dip and Lettuce: I have made two projects using Department 56 Real Plastic Snow; one is dip or sour cream and the other is lettuce.

Dip: Use a small container and add about a teaspoon of wicker white Folk Art acrylic paint (or any other bright white acrylic paint). Add a small quantity of Department 56 Plastic Snow (a little at a time). Stir together with paint brush, spoon or whatever. Add paint or snow until you get the texture you want. Put dip where you want it and let it dry. I think this would work to make tuna or tuna salad as well. Mix up tuna-colored acrylic paint (I think it always helps to have the real thing in front of you to help mix correct color.) Add Department 56 Snow and stir until coated. The more paint, the more it would look like tuna salad; less paint, more like plain tuna.

LETTUCE: First I got a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator to help me match the color. Then I got out a cereal bowl and spoon to mix the paint in. Get out a cookie sheet and line it with foil or plastic wrap (to spread out lettuce to dry.) Paint: Folk Art Wicker White, Folk Art Buttercup yellow, Folk Art Kelly Green, Folk Art Extender. Put about 2 tablespoons of extender and about 2 tablespoons of water in your bowl (extender keeps the paint from drying fast and makes it more translucent.) Add ½ teaspoon Wicker White. Add yellow and green by the drop. Stir together with a spoon. Looking at your lettuce try to match the light green of your real head of lettuce. After you have the right color, pour in the Plastic Snow (whatever quantity you want) and stir with the spoon to coat all of the Snow. Spread this out on cookie sheet and let dry for a day, stirring occasionally. Repeat above, matching paint to darker shade of green in head of lettuce. You now have 2 batches of greens. Mix them together and this makes a very realistic lettuce. This makes a lot of lettuce, so adjust your quantities for your use or give it to a lot of friends.

Mary Ann in Frankenmuth,MI

Individual souffle: I figured out what to use for single serving, individual souffle dishes - the caps on my daughter's magic markers. They're perfect once they're cut down to size. Now I have the large size souffle dishes, which are coffee creamers cut down to size, and the tiny individual souffle dishes, which are marker caps cut down.

Cutting Lite Brite Pegs: I placed the pegs on a terry towel, held down the large end with my index finger and thumb and sawed the smaller end off with a fine toothed jeweler's saw. This is very quick and easy to do, and I've never even come close to needing a transfusion. You can also hold the peg inside a plastic bag and cut the smaller end off with wire cutters. The flying bits are caught by the bag.

Darlene Focazio on Long Island

Making easy grapes: I once saw several tubes of "holeless" glass beads at our Ben Franklin store. They were in the 70% off bin and at the price of a few cents off I bought them for the "someday" they may come in handy for something. These are little round glass beads used to glue on clothing (full size) as decoration for those who don't or can't, bead. Mine are red, purple, two shades of green and black. Not only have I used up all of the grape colors as grapes, but the reds are beautiful as cherries on pies and pastries with a clear glaze over them. They are translucent and the colors are deep and vibrant.

To make the grapes, form a small cone shape on the end of covered wire. You can make it from Poly clay, but if you don't have any, wrap thread around and around into a cone shape on the wire,(stem size wire). Smear a thin layer of tacky glue on the cone and roll it in the glass beads, shape with your fingers and let dry.

Before I had the glass beads, I used to make them from transparent Fimo with just a touch of whatever color I wanted the grapes to be. Blend together until they are the translucent color you want. Roll into tiny balls and bake. Make your cone and roll in the baked balls. To make the tendrils, I wound fine wire on a needle and cut little pieces to glue on the grape bunch. There a fairly cheap paper punches in the shape of oak or maple leaves that look very good as grape leaves.

No fimo? Use millet or bird seed (the round ones) and after they are on the cone and dry, paint with acrylic paints in colors needed.

One other thing I do: When I was young, my Grandmother had a bowl of wax fruit on her table for decoration. She had many grandchildren and there were many little teethmarks in that fruit! I was doing a memory box of her kitchen (in the late 40's) and I made Fimo fruit, baked it, then melted paraffin wax in a small can in a pot of boiling water and dunked the fruit in it. .Wonderful "wax" fruit!!

Norieta

Holeless Beads: The tiny glass holeless beads suggested for grapes are available in Michaels and other craft stores. They used to come in long plastic tubes with stoppers, but now come in little plastic bags. BTW, they make good simulated buttons too! And the pearl ones make nice jewelry!

Alice Zinn

I made my first foods from fimo tonight (besides the cakes that I have made for my bakery). I used Petite Eats and Mini Treats from Sydnie Wagner and Homemade Meals by Barbara Meyer. Just started with some really simple things-peas (can't get any easier!), green beans, chicken legs and sliced bread. I am so pleased with the results and I would recommended these books to all

Jennifer - Thornton, CO

Grapes: I have made grapes using mustard seeds, and dipped them in paint. To do a bunch, just group them together while the paint is wet, or add a dab of glue.

Colette in Istanbul

Cakes: Hazelnut 2 layer cake: I had to mix some white with brown to get it sort of a milk chocolate color. Then I took some dark brown and made a flat rectangle. From this I cut 6 triangles for the top of the cake and baked it. Tonight, I cut a small corner of an art gum eraser down to smithereens, for nuts. I ran my finger around the edge of this cake and then rolled it in the "nuts." When it was dry, I took some white fabric paint and dabbed it in the center of the cake to look like a dab of white icing. It looks good enough to eat!

I was so impressed with the "nuts" that I made a brown 2 layer cake, and when it cooled I covered it all over with milk chocolate colored fabric paint and then sprinkled the "nuts" all over it. To make the chocolate shavings for the top, I took a very light tan crayon, pealed off the paper, and cranked out some shavings in one of those cheap little pencil sharpeners. Looks just like a German chocolate cake!

Then I made a cheesecake. That took a while to make too. I mixed the colors to match graham crackers, then added "a lot" of beach sand to it to form a flat one-layer cake. I put it aside and mixed the colors for the first layer, which is sort of a creamy pale yellow, and formed a one layer cake to put on top of the sandy clay cake. Then I rolled out some white for the top layer (made a one layer cake out of that), put it on top of the stack and cut through all three. I put some itty bitty red clay cherries on top and it really looks yummy!

Susan in VA

Bags: I have used my old Seal-a-Meal machine to make small bags for several years. Ziploc bags are a little heavier gauge and work better. I make 3 bags from a snack size bag. They work great for punched flower pieces. I run a sandwich bag through the machine, making smaller sections (3/4 to 1 inch.) Then, turn each section on the side, run it through again about 1-1/2 inches- this makes a little sealed section. I cut off one sealed edge, fill the bag with miniature candy pieces, etc, then use tacky glue with a folded piece of label from magazines to look like the candy packages from the grocery store. Be careful, the machines get very hot, let the plastic cool a few seconds before pulling apart.

Jeanette Hendricks

Crumpets and Pikelets: Crumpets are made from a sort of yeasty batter, poured into ring moulds and partially cooked. They can be roughly 3-4 inches across. Raw, they are pale ivory in colour, and limp, with tan brown bottoms. Their top is covered in holes, where the air bubbles from the yeast have exploded. They are faintly damp.

When toasted, they brown a little on top, and become faintly crisp. They have uneven tops, so don't try and make the top ruler-flat, use something human to make them very slightly uneven (and holey). They are then buttered. The whole point of a crumpet is butter; their ability to absorb butter is second to none, so lavish quantities likely to make any cardiologist faint can be spread on them. It melts into their hot holey carcasses. A cold buttered crumpet is a disgusting thing.

A 'pikelet' is a Yorkshire variant, the same in every way but thin as a thick pancake. And yes, another butter monster.

If you decide to make them from Fimo (NB I have never tried this) BUT if I were doing it I would push coarsely ground salt into the top surface. Once the Fimo is baked, drop cooked Fimo into hot water, which will dissolve the salt, leaving the holes. The holes on the top (which vary in size from tiny to 1/4" across) are the sign of the crumpet - you may make the crumpets bigger, or smaller, but you may not leave the holes off.

Helen from York, England

Scones: Take equal parts of ochre/white/yellow Fimo, and blend in a pinch of semolina (for texture). For fruit scones I'd add poppy seeds. For cheese scones I'd add pre-baked teeny bits of golden yellow Fimo Cheddar cheese. Scones (in real life) are cut from rolled out flat scone dough with fluted edged cutters. To emulate this, take small balls that, when flattened, will give you a depth of about 1-1/2" in real life i.e. 3/24ths" in 1:12 minis. Gently indent the sides of the small flattened ball with a cocktail stick so the whole of the circumference is patterned with faint vertical grooves. Gently brush with brown pastel to give color. Bake. You could then halve them and butter them. Don't forget the strawberry jam. Well, not on the cheese ones... Please note that scones are moody little beasts if home made, and can come out of the oven beastly flat, or really high. They are also laterally challenged in that it can be rare for a home made scone to look neat and tidy. More often they are vaguely misshapen. So if your Fimo scones aren't perfectly round - good!

Helen from York, England

Wedding cake columns: PCV pipe?? It is available in 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch and up. Find it in hardware stores, cut it to size with a hack saw.

MAP in Puyallup

Tamales: A suggestion for the corn husk for tamales might be crepe paper that is rolled and lightly glued. Party supply places still carry that product. Crepe paper streamers might have too large a texture while the folded paper is finer.

Another suggestion is to roll out Fimo (or favorite poly clay) very, very thin and then press it onto real corn husks to get the texture. Roll and bake.

Sharon Krauss

Dribbles of Icing: Get some of those metal tips people have talked about before. I got mine in a set of four and they go from a tiny hole tip to a very tiny hole tip! They fit on the end of glue spouts, paint spouts (like fabric paint), etc. And if your paint doesn't have a spout, you can buy the little plastic bottles with spouts empty and then pour your paint in them, attach the size metal tip you want, and dribble away :)

Mary Lynne in Huntington, WV

Dribbles of Icing: You can fold tin foil into a tiny little cake decorating tube and drizzle your paint for the cakes.

Alberta in WV

Making Ice - I would simulate ice by using DAP Clearseal. It is a caulking compound that is as clear as water( glass) You can read thru it. It costs about $5.00 for a little over a 10 Oz. cartridge. Of course you have to have a caulking gun ($1.50 ) The only problem is that the Clearseal caulking adheres to porous and non porous surfaces which means that making a mold to give you square ice cubes may be the stumbling block. IDEA: Make a big block of the Clearseal and then , with a razor blade cut the smaller blocks from the large block.

Bob in Hollywood, FL.

Nuts on candy apples: cork looks good for nuts on candy apples. Just chop it up fine and sprinkle it on.

jeenee