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A silly idea - can I make a gingerbread spinning wheel?

 
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I don't know where to buy cotton candy.  I think it would be perfect for the fibre.  
 
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I think it would be hard to find at this time of year, and from my recollection, it denatures just sitting there for more than a day. Maybe there are stores near you which carry the stabilized version that the web says will last 2-3 weeks if you leave it sealed!

Homemade versions: https://www.tastemade.com/videos/hand-pulled-cotton-candy/
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-Homemade-Cotton-Candy-WITHOUT-a-Machin/

If you made your own, you could potentially put fresh out every few days on the spots that needed it?
 
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This is other versions on a similar theme:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_beard_candy
The common thing with all is that they suffer when subjected to humidity and heat.

What about using angelica, nettle stems or celery candied and cut into fine strips?
 
r ranson
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So obviously, I've never used food colouring before.

Still on my experiments.
I put aside some royal icing to colour.  Added a few drops.  Added some more.... and more ... and most of a bottle. and the whole bottle.  It only got to a pastel colour.  

Maybe there is a trick to it?

Is this safe to eat?
 
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I only know this because my Mom has a professional cake decorating kit, but there's food coloring specifically for frosting and icing that is far stronger and comes in a gel. (Just a dipped toothpick will pick up enough color to stir up a sometimes too intense color). Not sure how much of the regular liquid food coloring you would need for icing.
 
Harmony Dybala
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If you want to buy some, I recommend Wilton's because it is great for dyeing wool! I have used it more for that than cakes, even though I absolutely love cake painting.  
 
r ranson
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After testing,  the normal food dye did not have the structural strength I'm used to in Royal icing nor did it taste as good.

I don't know what grocery shopping is like just now due to the state of emergency we are in and everyone is being asked to stay home,  so this year,  i need to scale back my plans to work with what I have in the house.
 
Harmony Dybala
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As far as safety goes, the artificial ingredients in food coloring are totally-safe-and-or-the-cause-of-adhd-and-pediatric-cancer-and-also-why-my-cousin-can't-get-a-date-and-my-dog-keeps-eating-my-homework. Trying to guess whether the icing is edible at this point is sort of like multiplying by x.
 
Harmony Dybala
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The manufacturer does sell the food coloring gel online, though. https://www.wilton.com/red-no-taste-color-1-ounce/610-998.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA-eeMBhCpARIsAAZfxZCqtA54sQO7WjW3vS4YnRq7yDWJYHDPqcpb0g6__6GEUqpqbhdcnSwaAgIjEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
 
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Chocolate and white icings would realistically be enough colors for a spinning wheel. They don't tend to look like a lit up ferris wheel.
 
Harmony Dybala
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But wouldn't cocoa change the structural integrity of the icing?
 
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When I want to make pink/red icing for my kids, I use some "beet powder" I found on sale at our local grocery store. It works pretty well for giving good color. BUT! I'm pretty sure it's not long-lasting. (I say this because I bought food-based food coloring to make play-dough for my nieces and my kids, and the red ceased to be red within a few weeks.)

If you happen to have cochineal lying around from dye products, you could also get some natural purples/pinks/reds out of it. Cochineal is used to to dye yogurt and other foods, so it should be good for your icing, too!
 
Paul Fookes
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Harmony makes a good point.  To change the colour of sugar just heat it.  Parisian essence is sugar burned beyond recognition and then rehydrated with a little water.  If you need to make a grain effect you can mix different coloured icings together and pull and roll just like making pulled lollies (candy).  You can do similar with the gingerbread.  I agree with Nicole, vegetable and root colours will not be persistent because they oxidise.  Real cochineal is great.  Just be careful that you do not get tangled up with the anneals which are often used.  To do highlights, you can get edible gold leaf in small sheets for not a lot of money and use it to cover some of the metal ware parts to give them a bit of zing.  The gold does not tarnish.
 
r ranson
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This is turning out to be very different than my imagination.  

But I'm learning a lot.

And... well, one of the things I've learned is if it isn't working, add more icing.  
 
r ranson
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Some help needed choosing the thumbnail (or suggestions for making a better one) for the gingerbread video.

Sadly, I already ate the wheel so I'm limited in the photos I took before I got hungry.  
ginger-wheel-thumb-one.JPG
One
One
Gingerbread.jpg
Two
Two
Gingerbread1.jpg
Three
Three
 
Paul Fookes
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Number 2. Great spinning wheel
 
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I like number one. Because I can see more of the wheel.

I feel you did a great job with that wheel.  I had been wondering when we would get to see the wheel.

Thank you for sharing.
 
Jay Angler
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I rather like #1 also, but I find the Tardis in the back-ground a little distracting. Is it worth trying to edit the background?
 
Nicole Alderman
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Jay Angler wrote:I rather like #1 also, but I find the Tardis in the back-ground a little distracting. Is it worth trying to edit the background?



Editing out the tardis is hard--at least for someone like me. I've never quite found the magic tool in photoshop that makes it easy. I tried my hand with the clone tool, but it looks rather...um...photoshopped. I do agree that the tardis (A) draws the attention away from the spinning wheel, and (B) makes it harder to read the words. I just don't know if it can be easily/satisfactorily mended unless someone has uber photoshopping skills.

I think the blue makes the font hard to read. I think maybe brown that matches the spinning wheel might be better. I also gave the words it a tiny black outline to help them pop out. I wasn't sure what font R used, so I just tried one that looked relatively decent.
ginger-bread-smaller-font.png
With out tardis, but with bad photoshop
With out tardis, but with bad photoshop
ginger-bread-tardis.png
With tardis
With tardis
ginger-bread-maybe-better.jpg
I just realized I should have clicked on the image to get a higher-resolution version. So, I did just that and hopefully this one is a little less glaringly photoshopped....
I just realized I should have clicked on the image to get a higher-resolution version. So, I did just that and hopefully this one is a little less glaringly photoshopped....
 
Jay Angler
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Actually, I've got a fairly large screen and with the words covering the area, the photoshop job looks perfectly good. Once it's a small as a thumbnail, I think it would be fine.

However, r ranson may have chosen her colours and font for a reason. I admit I found them difficult to read, which may be why I choose the version with no words.
 
Nicole Alderman
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Speaking of blurring, I realized I could use the blur tool in photoshop to smooth out the phtoshopping. I think it helped!
ginger-bread-blurred.jpg
Blur tool is my friend today!
Blur tool is my friend today!
ginger-bread-blue.jpg
here it is with blue. I can't seem to make my shadows as crisp as hers, though :(
here it is with blue. I can't seem to make my shadows as crisp as hers, though :(
 
r ranson
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Choice of colours is : raven is really bad at colour theory and doesn't know how to choose colours well.

Font is: League Gothic.

Tempted to have no text as an experiment because most of my thumbs have text.  Would it do better with just the picture speaking?

Some more to play with.

Thumbnails are hard.
Especially because the gingerbread doesn't really look like a wheel all that much.
four.jpg
four
four
five.jpg
five
five
six-is-the-number.jpg
six is the number
six is the number
seven.jpg
seven
seven
 
Anne Miller
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Now I like the cream colored lamb.

I liked Nicole's 2nd to the last except I want to see the spindle.
 
r ranson
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The lamb is a set of coasters that I keep meaning to work into a video.  it is so cool!
 
Nicole Alderman
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I definitely like the warm-toned sheep the best! And, yeah, Anne, I was bummed when I put the words over the spindle, but it seemed the best place, visually, to put the words. Having the words in the upper left hand corner means the eye goes there and then diagonally down to the spindle naturally. (I can't recall what this is called in art. But, the way we arrange a picture/painting/etc influences how our eye is drawn as we look at it. We usually want our picture to naturally draw the eye to the important part of the picture, while looking at other, less-important stuff along the way.)



Choosing colors is hard! I spent a lot of years thinking I needed to use a new or contrasting font/shadow color for it to stand out. But, it seems that using white and black--or one of the colors already in the picture--seems to work the best. One bit of design advice my brother gave me was to use just 3-5 colors in a design. More colors usually just makes things busy and confusing. It's hard, though, because colors are fun!

I apparently don't have league gothic font, so I just tried a different gothic font to see if it would work.  I also tried cropping it down to try and draw the eye toward the spinning wheel. I'm not sure if it's any sort of improvement (or help...)
ginger-bread-sheep.png
Warm-toned sheep & spindle,cropped slightly
Warm-toned sheep & spindle,cropped slightly
ginger-bread-sheep-not-cropped.png
Un-cropped!
Un-cropped!
 
Harmony Dybala
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I think the giant sheep is more distracting than the TARDIS. 😅
 
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Harmony d'Eyre wrote:I think the giant sheep is more distracting than the TARDIS. 😅

Yes, but at least the sheep is on topic! Where do you think r ranson's raw material comes from?
Actually she does more than just sheep's wool. Cotton, linen, alpaca at least.
 
r ranson
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The tardis does make a small appearance in this video.

But probably doesn't need to clutter up the thumbnail.

I was also thinking if I had time - I could buy some ginger and do something clever with that.  But then again, I'm not that clever/cleaver/whatever, so it would probably fail.  

and I already ate the wheel.  
 
r ranson
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I got silly.


Better?
Worse?

Suggestions?  
eigh.jpg
eigh
eigh
 
r ranson
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I like how the icing looks like snow.

And this was also part of the process and video... not sure if I should use it for a thumbnail.
broke.JPG
nine
nine
 
Harmony Dybala
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Nicole Alderman wrote:Speaking of blurring, I realized I could use the blur tool in photoshop to smooth out the phtoshopping. I think it helped!



I think the first one in the post I'm quoting above, with black and white text, is the best option that's been presented.
 
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Tada!



As you can see in the video, this was more challenging than I expected.  How hard can it be?  It's just a spinning wheel.  I've assembled and rebuilt and repaired hundreds of them (it was my day job as well as my hobby).

Well, I learned more with this project than I ever knew I didn't know with 20 years of experience working with spinning wheels.  

Thanks, everyone for encouraging me to try this.  I'm so happy I did.  And thank you for all the good advice, even if I didn't follow much of it.  I have ideas of making a better wheel next year... maybe.  
 
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delicious!  I heart gingerbread.
creative makes holiday happy
 
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Wow, it's so cool! Good job on not giving up. I adore the gingerbread TARDIS.

Good job with the music track too. It never competed with the vocal track and wasn't distracting (like others tend to do).
 
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Thanks.  
Another gingerbread video is scheduled for Christmas Eve.

I admit, the TARDIS was a lot more fun than the wheel.  Much easier and far more forgiving.  

Glad the music worked.  It's very difficult to get right but without it there is a nasty background noise that vanishes with the quiet music.  
 
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Um... things got a bit out of hand on another website where I shared my video.  

There was, um... disappointment, that my gingerbread wasn't fully functional.

I may have thrown down the gauntlet and encouraged others to do better.  More words happened and this fell out of my keyboard.

The Deadline is Christmas Eve 2022
Let’s make the guidelines more firm.

Deadline: midnight the 24th December (your time zone)
100% edible
Preferably with gingerbread (or other winter Holiday foodstuff - so not just Christmas), adjusting recipes for dietary needs is fine.
Must end with a spinning wheel-shaped object
Bonus points if you can make it spin/turn.
extra bonus points if you can make it function.
Extra extra bonus points if you can find something that is edible and works as fibre.

There are no prizes…Just bragging rights.

Although if there is enough interest, I might change my mind and donate something from my Etsy store to the best ones. Let’s see how it goes.

Maybe if someone has image-making powers they could make a badge we could use somehow?

Anyway, that gives us a few months to think and forget and then panic about it.




So I'm going to have to make a video about this - I wonder where to find a gauntlet?  Maybe release this video on the 24th of Oct??  Or Nov?

And I have a year to learn more about gingerbread building.

I may regret this.  
 
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I think any old glove will do to represent a gauntlet! You could even do a hand-spun, hand-knitted woolen mitten or glove!
 
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r ranson wrote:

There was, um... disappointment, that my gingerbread wasn't fully functional.

And did they make a gingerbread spinning wheel that was functional? I think that other website needs to learn permies manners!
 
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I am so happy to see someone else taking up the challenge!  

 
What do you have to say for yourself? Hmmm? Anything? And you call yourself a tiny ad.
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