More Dupes for MGA’s Maki-It Minis
This is a long overdue follow-up post to one I made several months ago about making miniature food. In it, I talked about how while I am a fan of the mini line, they’re rather expensive, and I’m really not a fan of the whole “blind box” trend that’s been taking the toy market by storm lately. So whenever I deign to pick up a few of the Make it Mini balls at the store, I make what’s included in them, and then use the catalogue of all available minis to design my own. Here’s a whole ‘nother group of mini food I made recently, alongside the inspiration from the official line!
The first is watermelon sorbet, the official version of which you can see here: LycheesMinis on Instagram. I liked this one because of the lovely bowl they included, and because I had an idea of how I wanted to make it. Fortunately, I had made a series of bowls out of white polymer clay a while back, and, while they were serviceable, I really didn’t like them otherwise. Once painted, however, they turned out much lovelier than I thought they would!
Ok, so here’s how I made this one: after I made the bowl with polymer clay and painted it with craft acrylics (there are many tutorials for making tiny bowls online, so I won’t cover that now), I filled it about halfway up with hot glue. I had fashioned and painted a polymer clay spoon, so I pushed that in while it was still warm. After it had cooled, I used hot glue again to create a swirl in the middle of the “sorbet,” holding it upside down until it cooled to make sure it didn’t flatten out. After that, I covered the sorbet with modpodge, and sprinkled it with glitter to get the texture. What color didn’t really matter, since I was just going to paint it afterwards, so I think I went with white. After that dried, I painted it “watermelon” color, glued on some paper for the mint, and glossed it up with gloss mod podge. Of course, if you’ve got glitter that happens to be the appropriate color, you could follow the same steps minus the painting, and it would probably end up even more convincing.
Next up is the “unicorn cake” that I made in the style of the pink birthday cake in the catalogue (Official version here). I have to admit this one isn’t my favorite, I gave myself license to go a bit “crazy” with it, but I think it turned out a little too much and not coherent enough to look nice.
I mean, I did have fun making it though! It’s made from craft foam, cut into circles and then covered with an outer layer of foam for “icing.” I then covered the seams of the foam with chocolate drizzle and polymer clay cane shapes that I bought from the resin section of the craft store.
I probably should have stuck with white icing all over (puff paint), and I may go back over and paint it in the end. The whipped cream at the top is polymer clay–I made a bunch in batches a while back. Basically you roll out a small tube of white clay, then twist it in your fingers until it looks right. You can cut off the bottom either before or after baking
Next up is a banana split sundae (Official: ToyTinyBlog on Instagram. Swipe to see finished version)! The way I made this one was a bit of a revelation to me. See, I bought the Make it Minis Hersey’s kit a while back, and it had several different types of ice cream and whipped toppings. They’re all made from plastic, so if you want to keep them, you can stick them to a metal or glass surface, and cover them completely with hot glue. Once the hot glue has cooled, you peel the the plastic item out (it’ll be a little bit flexible), and you have a perfect mold of that little tiny item. So after doing this, I can now make as many cupcakes, ice cream scoops, and whipped cream toppings as I like!
That’s where each of these ice creams came from, while the cherry on top and bananas were sculpted by hand. The chocolate drizzle I believe was left over from another kit.
The MGA version comes in a bowl the shape of a banana, but I neither wanted to make one of these, nor did I like the look of it. So instead I used a method for making them out of paper that I’ve done before with great results. Basically, you cut either a square or rectangle, and then remove four triangles of the same size from each corner. You then glue the sides of these triangles together to make the sloping sides of the bowl. It’s actually easiest (for me at least) if I do this with hot glue, then use my fingers–or a tool–to wipe off the excess from the top (underneath usually doesn’t show up so it doesn’t matter) and let it dry. Then you cut a couple of rectangles slightly smaller than the bowl’s base, and glue those to the bottom for stability. Afterwards I painted this one black and red, with gold edges.
I used this same method to make a bowl/plate/plowl for the next mini, which I think is my favorite:
Shrimp cocktail! I think this one turned out pretty similar to the MGA version, but I did quickly realize that it was going to need to be glued to a plate, because it was very top-heavy. I did, unusually, use resin tinted with paint for this mini, but I think the effect was well worth it. Each of the shrimps was made by hand with white polymer clay, then painted after being baked. I made waaay more than I needed, so I set an extra on the plate to help with balance (but also it looks nice).
The bowl that the shrimp are in was bought from Etsy, I believe. While I do usually like to make most of my minis, this was one I just didn’t know how to do on my own. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to make convincing glass minis.
The plate is part of a set I made a while back, and I’ve been using them for various things since. Using the method above, I thought they would look very similar to those rustic artisan ceramics that show up in import stores so often. A little gloss modpodge afterwards made it look even more convincing.
Lastly, I’ve recreated the Oreo cookie pie from an earlier series, since I always thought it was cool. I’ve used the method of putting clay into a bottle cap, which means it’s much messier than the official version. Still, I think it has a bit of personality as a result. As much as a miniature pie can have personality, anyway.
My legally-distinct oreo cookies are made from hole-punched craft foam stuck together with white puff paint. Since they were so easy to make, I made them in several different colors, so mine are black, brown, and pink. I’m not sure if Oreos have ever come in pink, but it sounds like they’d be good! I have garnished mine with tiiiiny little marshmellows made from polymer clay–just roll them out into very thin pipes, then cut them into smaller bits.
The custard in the middle is leftover resin from another kit, but I could have just as easily made my own with crystal resin+white paint, hot glue, or even PVA glue let set to dry for a very long time. All of those substances are slightly translucent, and tend towards white in color, so they would have worked fine.
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That’s all the minis for this time. I’ve been thinking about making a tutorials section in my main site where I go over some of these techniques in detail, with illustrations and photos, since it seems like the blog just isn’t the best place for it. What do you think, would you be interested in learning how to make these too?
