I finally figured out how to do the faces for the figures. Yeah! The first one I did was the Nutcracker and I didn’t like how he turned out but wasn’t sure what to do about it. He just looked old and not very happy. Bill suggested that the fondant was to bumpy. I was pretty sure this from the texture of the Styrofoam base.

Nutcracker

So taking that into account I tried again with man. I put some extra fondant down for his cheeks, forehead, chin and nose. This was to give the flat form of the Styrofoam more of the shape of a face. Then I rolled out a really thin sheet of the fondant (it is actually half fondant and half gum paste) and laid that over the whole face area. I smoothed that out and did a little adjustment to the shaping. Next step was to roll out a thicker layer of skin colored fondant and put that down over the other two layers.So far so good, I was feeling hopeful at this point.

man

After smoothing that out, I added his ears, a nose, cut in a mouth and poked holes through the fondant for his eyes. I widened the eye holes out a bit and put in two small balls of white fondant and patted that down into an eye shape. Next came two small green balls of fondant for his iris that I smooshed flat and finally two tiny black balls for the pupils, also smooshed flat. I like how he came out! I also got the woman done. There is hope after all! When I get the rest of the faces done, I will probably go back and do the Nutcracker over. But I’ll wait in case time gets critical and I can’t get it done.

woman

We had five kids from the Youth Council come on Saturday. The cars for the Ferris wheel are almost all covered on the outside with licorice. Bill got the pillow blocks for the Ferris wheel axle. The batteries for his drill died so he went to get some new ones and ended up with a new drill. Same price as buying two batters plus it included a charger. Then he got called back into work so he only made a little progress. Bill is thinking about taking a couple of days off this week so he can get some more time in on the Ferris wheel.