Candy...again

Polymer clay can really be addictive and it was hard to put it away....only for a while. But not before I made these suckers on a stick.   This was my chance to use up all my little bits of clay before I broke open a new pack.  The picture isn't very good but they are quite colorful. I made extras so some will go into my printer's tray

Rock Candy

 I actually made some realistic looking Rock Candy, quite by accident. When I found out my grandkids were coming down, I went to a kids arts and craft website in case we needed something to do on a rainy day.  I came across a craft where the kids could make their own "geodes" using metallic pipe cleaners and a solution of Borax ( a laundry booster).  So I did a trial run and this is what I came up with:

The crystals were huge! I had left them in the solution far too long. But one look at them and I'm thinking.... Rock Candy! I had a lot the solution left so I re-heated it, added blue food coloring just for the heck of it and used cloth covered wire.  The shape turned out great but that was about it.

From the picture below you can tell that the solution went way up the cloth (wicking) and the crystals started forming there.  By the time all was done I had a stick of candy nearly an inch tall which means about a foot tall in real life. An hour later all the color was gone.

I decided to go with my original plan.  Wrapped in several layers of paper towels, I started pounding away.  No light tap, tap, tap.  Had to use a little bit more power because the crystals were very hard.

I did get a lot of powder so I dumped it into a strainer.  Any thing that went through got tossed out

Paint some wire light brown, let dry, then add glue to one end, dip that end in a layer of the smallest crystals.  Let dry and repeat the entire process two more times.  I ended up with this:

They look much better than the picture shows and I was very pleased.  The thing is I don't like Rock Candy.  Pure sugar with no flavor.  But they are unique and kind of pretty.

The last thing I made was fudge.

Walnut:

Pistachio:

I also made traditional fudge with no nuts but didn't take a picture of it.  Now some of you may roll your eyes at this. but for the nuts I used real peanuts.  Washed and dried them, put them in my nut chopper and stared chopping away.  I rolled the fudge in the peanuts and baked as usual.  Worked great.

With all this candy making, I didn't forget about my nautical shop.  I have made a few thing that I'll show you in my next post.

Take care

Diane