Polymer Clay Caprese Salad and Resin Bottles

As I continue to procrastinate on building my kitchen, I keep making stuff to go into it instead. Recently, I received a set of resin molds from AliExpress that I was eager to try out. I've never worked with resin before, but I always see videos online and it looked like fun. Well, it was a bit of a disaster except for a bottle and one plate mold. The bottle actually came out really well, and since I originally thought it was a wine bottle, I mixed a dark red shade of resin. When it popped out, I realized it was more of a condiment/sauce bottle, and the red looked like balsamic vinegar, so it ended up working in the end. Immediately I knew I had to make an olive oil bottle to go with the vinegar, and thus the idea to make a polymer clay caprese salad was born.

I've barely worked with polymer clay and never making miniatures with it, so this whole process was becoming quite the adventure. After watching a few Youtube tutorials on making mini tomatoes, I finally found one that seemed doable. Seriously, some of them had so many steps that they made me want to throw away all of my clay and never look back.

After some trial-and-error and using "beige" thinking it was "transluscent," I made some okay tomato slices. (The mozzarella pieces were a breeze and I now pride myself in being an expert, clay mozzarella maker.) "Great," I thought, "this is coming together." Until I burnt my tomatoes in the oven. Who knew that 15 minutes was way too long for clay that's smaller than a dime?!

Luckily, I could flip them over and salvage the slices. That side didn't have the texture or seeds I added, but at least they weren't burnt. I painted some green and red in the actual tomatoes to cover up the burnt areas. Finally, I added some dyed clear nail polish to look like balsamic drizzle and pieces of green paper to look like basil.

I really liked working with clay because it wasn't messy and didn't take up too much room or large tools to complete a project. Resin, on the other hand, probably isn't going to be my new thing. It was easy enough to work with, but having to wear gloves, use multiple cups to mix, and then spilling it everywhere wasn't fun. Plus, there's not enough room for error or fixing mistakes with resin. So, kudos to all the resin artists out there. You're all awesome!

YouTube Tomato Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX5uMcnblcc&list=WL&index=18&t=0s

Oil and vinegar labels: