Sweets for the Sweet

I recently decided to make some custom candies for my Blythes. And being the big Doctor Who fan that I am, the obvious choice was da da da DA! Jellybabies!

I was so pleased with how they turned out I decided to post how I did it. The same technique can probably be used to make other jelly type candies, like gummy bears or peachy O's.

Now obviously getting them as small as they needed to be, and uniform in shape, was the tricky bit. I molded a single one in polymer clay and used E600 to attach it to the end of a toothpick making a very tiny Jellybaby stamp. When the glue dried I mixed together some Amazing Mold Putty and formed it onto a little pad. Then I repeatedly pressed the stamp into the mold putty before it set up. The resulting flexible mold looked like this...

I've made molds with this product before and they generally work quite well. The molds are supposed to be food safe and can even be heated in the oven for up to 395 degrees F, which is just perfect for the purpose of melting polystyrene crystals (or those little crystals you get in those Makit Bakit kits that melt at 375 F).

I've made full size molds from actual Jellybabies in this fashion that turned out beautifully and made very cool jewelry. But I quickly discovered that the size of the mold makes a big difference in how the crystals melt together... with larger molds, like the full size Jellybaby, they melt just fine. But in these miniscule molds you can only fit in about 2 or 3 crystals per impression... and then when you do try to melt them they sort of just soften into little molten balls but don't combine together. The trick to solving this is simply increasing the amount of surface area per crystal, I used pliers to cut the crystals into smaller chunks and then filled the cavities with the bits.

A word of warning... these molds, though supposedly safe at these higher temperatures, do emit a funky odor. It dissipates quickly enough, but just FYI.

And when they were finished they turned out like this...

Here's a finished Jellybaby in a Blythe hand : )



Oh, and if you need a little candy bowl to keep them in...
 

This one was made by melting a circle of the clear glitter crystals on foil into a nice flat round, and then after it cools you place it over a stack of dimes and pop it back in the oven until it droops over the stack, making a little fluted bowl. Oh, make sure it's completely cooled before you remove the dimes.... getting burned by a hot handful of dimes will make you feel like a right idiot.

And there you go, candy for your dolls : )