Baseball season has begun!  We do love our Colorado Rockies.  And since our town hosts the JUCO (Junior College) World Series every May, baseball is a big deal locally.  But, this post isn’t about baseball.  I want to bend your ear about a different kind of batter…the baking kind.  Now, is that a clever segue, or what?  (Peanut gallery, remain silent.)

My previous post was about the glass mixing bowls I discovered, and this entry is really a continuation of that one.   The vintage glass sediment bowls and newer replacement bowls come in various shapes and sizes.  And, as I have now found out, they come in different colors!  I’m not sure that the bowls are originally made in colors.  I think the glass changes over time.  I have gotten some bowls that have a smokey gray color to them and I even bought one recently that had a blue-green tinge to it!  I’m sure you have seen old canning jars and glass insulators atop power poles that have turned color over time….something about the oxidation of the metal impurities in the sand in the glass.  I’m no chemist, but you get the picture.

I recently obtained (on Ebay) a fabulous refrigerator for use in my 1:6 scale world.  I had been searching long and hard for one that wasn’t plastic, looked vintage and/or retro, didn’t have a modern ice dispenser in the front panel, and didn’t have Barbie’s logo splashed across it.  To my delight, I found the perfect fridge, and it’s even that marvelous, retro shade of pink!  It matches my stand mixer in pink that began life as a Christmas ornament.  Someone on the Doll Divas discussion board had mentioned the mixer ornaments last year, and I knew I had to have one.  I found only two at the time.  This year, I plan to visit the ornament aisle way earlier than is my norm.  If there are ornaments that will work in my doll world, I want to find them before they are picked over and sold out.  I mention the fridge and the mixer because they are now being used in my makeshift OSS kitchen for the baking bowls etc. that I’ve been making using the glass sediment bowls.  I have decided I need to attempt to make some stand mixers since we, as collectors, cannot expect to find them at craft stores every Christmas.  And the main reason I want to make mixers is because of something I discovered late last night right before I headed to bed.

The smaller version of the glass sediment bowls fits the ornament mixers!  Yayyy!

The original bowl that had been glued to the mixer had been removed by yours truly right after purchasing the mixer because the bowl was not seated properly on the stand.  It was sitting in, shall we say, a crooked fashion.  If you know me at all, you know I can’t tolerate crooked.  lol  I am forever nudging pictures so that they hang straight on the wall and adjusting doilies on tables so that they are centered, etc..  So, when I bought the last two mixer ornaments last year, I promptly wrapped one for a friend and tore the bowl off of the other one.  So, the mixer and bowl have been separated for months.  Only 3 days ago did I have my hubby sand down the bottom of the bowl so that it sits properly on the stand!  I can’t tolerate crooked, but procrastination and I are fast friends.  Ha!  So, that is why the original bowl, which is made of plastic, was not attached to my mixer and why I was able to try the small sediment bowl in its place.  To my delight, it worked!  So, of course, I had to slip the chocolate frosting bowl in my newest kitchen set onto the mixer…

Et voila!  It looked fabulous!  That led to my desire to put something in my original mixer bowl.  Since it is made of plastic, it cannot be baked with polymer clay contents.  I was left with a couple of options, and since I was pouring resin yesterday, I decided to try resin raw eggs.  The yolks are polymer clay.  I had made several extra the other day when I was creating my baking bowls, so I had three pre-baked yolks ready to go.  However, I really wanted to be able to remove the eggs from the bowl so I could make different bowl contents and switch them out as needed.  I didn’t have any resin release product handy, so I thought I’d try plastic wrap to line the bowl.  It seemed to work, but the resin didn’t have enough mass/weight to push the plastic wrap smoothly against the sides of the bowl.  That, as it would turn out, was the least of my problems.  In a nutshell, resin eats plastic wrap.  LOL  In this instance, it was not a disaster as the bowl was my own, and the end product doesn’t look all that bad.  I’m sure anyone reading this who has even a slight knowledge of chemistry is chuckling.  Oh, well…as I said, I’m no chemist.  And nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Next time I attempt a removable resin creation, I’ll go buy the proper release agent.

You can see, in the photo above, the resin lines on the sides of the bowl where the plastic wrap had been creased to fit the curved interior of the bowl.  I had used a Popsicle stick to smooth the plastic wrap, but where the resin touched the plastic, it ate it.  So, the bowl was left with resin where I didn’t want it.  As I said, lesson learned.

Now, my brain is working overtime to figure out how to make the stand mixers.  I want to make them, if possible, so that they will tip back like mixers in TRW.  Hubby’s mission is to find me a joint/hinge/thingymabob in the right size that I can incorporate into my creation.  If anyone has any fabulous ideas, shoot me an email!  With the knowledge that the bowls will fit on the mixers, I can now fill the bowls with various batters so that collectors can switch them out whenever they choose.  Oh, the possibilities!  Bill….why aren’t you at the hardware store?