Olive you!

Materials: Polymer Clay, Spray Paint

Well, it's almost Valentines Day, so I think we should do something romantic here in the Fake-n-Bake kitchen, and what could be more romantic than making fake olives?  What's that, you say? 'Almost anything is more romantic than fake olives? Even saving the cherry post from a few weeks ago would have made more sense- at least they are red like valentines!' To you, dear reader, I say this. Shut up!  Olives are plenty romantic and, more importantly, I don't have anything else to blog about at the moment. So, there.

These olives, like the hilarious white olives from the Dirty Martinis post, are made from Sculpey, a  polymer clay that hardens when baked.  For these olives, I decided to start with polymer clay that was closer in color to the finished product. I was hoping that this would be exactly the right color as is, but we will talk about that a bit later.

The first thing I did was to shape the olives.  What makes an olive look like an olive?

The oblong shape, of course...

A pit....(I used the hollow end of a pen to make this)

The x shape made by the pitting machine....

...and a pimento!

Hehehe! Olives on parade!

Once I had sculpted the olives, I baked them according to the directions on the Sculpey package. This worked well, but I found that the olives didn't look exactly right. For one, they lost much of their sheen in the baking process. Also, in comparing them to real olives, I found them to a be a bit dark in color.  To solve both of these issues, I used a bit of Olive Bright Design Master spray paint to brighten them up, and add a bit of variation of color over each olive.  (Part of what often gives fake food away is unnaturally uniform color.)

Aluminum foil olive trough!

Once the paint dried, all that was left was to put the olives in a bowl, and set them on the bar cart next to those maraschino cherries I made.

Olive you 'til the end of time.

Happy Valentines, y'all.  Olive you lots.