Polymer Clay Espresso Cup on Plate with Chocolate Covered Biscotti

I wasn't able to get great pictures of these at the moment, so I will update later when I can get some better pictures. This was a gift for Christmas to my boyfriends Dad. We both share a love of espresso (he in fact got me real espresso cups for Christmas!) so it only made sense to commemorate that in clay.

This project was a bit harder than I thought it would be (isn't it always!). I wanted a magnet for their fridge, which meant either having it flat in the wrong "plane" on the fridge, or cutting about a third of the plate off to have it stick out a bit from the fridge (which is what I finally chose). It just didn't look right with the plate laying flat against the fridge. I also learned a lot about magnets during this project and chose a small neodymium magnet glued to the cup to hold the piece up.

I also really dislike working with white polymer clay. It picks up everything! Small pieces of dust, thread, other clay colors that are on your workspace already, everything! This means cleaning up your workspace (for me thats is a self healing mat) with rubbing alcohol and a lot of "post processing" with sand paper.

The biscotti was very fun to make. I started with white clay and added a little bit of brown to get a nice golden baked color. I then shaped the clay into a biscotti shape and gently added texture with a pointy tool. To get the holes to look more ragged look like a biscotti would, I inserted the pointy tool at a 90 degree angle, then with the pointy tool still in the clay I lowered the tool towards the table until it was about 45 degrees and then pulled the pointy tool out.

The chocolate coating is brown acrylic clay applied very thickly, then coated with a few thick coats of Gloss Mod Podge.

The espresso inside the cup is brown clay with a bit of translucent mixed in. Then I used acrylic paint in brown, light tan, red, and metallic gold to add the crema. I added a thin coat of Gloss Mod Podge to seal the espresso in the cup.