A Pizza My Heart Brooch

Pizza: the ultimate food. You can cover it in various meats, you can combine meats and veggies, you can make the crust from veggies, you can even have a none pizza with left beef if you want! The combinations and customization possibilities are endless. With Valentine's day coming up, I thought what better way to show my love for pizza, my ultimate Valentine, than to immortalize it in clay and proudly display it for the world to see! (Also Tuesday was National Pizza Day, so there's that.)

Inspired by YouTube tutorials and photos I saw on Pinterest, I set out to make my very own brooch to symbolize my love for this savory treat. So far the comments I've gotten on it have been wonderful. From, "WOW, you MADE that??" to "I seriously want to eat that tiny pizza." I have to say I am honored that people think my tiny pizza is real food. That means a job well done in my book!

If you're interested, I have prepared a special slice of information for how I created this brooch.

Here are the ingredients I used:

• Polymer clay (I use Sculpey brand) in tan, white, yellow, red, brown, and translucent
• TLS- Translucent Liquid Sculpey
• Chalk pastels in brown, yellow, and red
• Acrylic paints in the same colors
• Glaze for polymer clay in satin or shiny
• Inspiration photos and YouTube tutorials, especially this one:

Making a pizza out of clay is a lot like making a real pizza. The first step is to start with the dough.

Knead and shape the tan clay into a crust pattern. By placing it on a piece of course sandpaper, it gives it a similar texture to that of real pizza crust.

Then texture the crust around the edge with a brush and color it with some chalk pastels. I also mixed up the "sauce" by combining TLS, a bit of red clay, and a small amount of brown chalk pastels until I got the right consistency and color. The pepperoni were created by following the tutorial in the video above. The cheese was made by combining a small amount of yellow with white and mixing until well blended then stretching it out and forming it into pizza cheese that would fit over the middle heart.

Layer the sauce and the cheese on the crust. (See what I was saying, exactly like making a pizza only a lot more tedious!) After that, place the pepperonis in a pleasing manner upon the cheese. This is where the perfectionist in me started at pictures of heart-shaped pizzas and desperately tried to make mine look like them. And then I put some grease on it. (TLS and yellow pastels)

Now it's all ready for baking!

Because I wanted to make mine into a brooch, I placed the pin on the back and added more tan polymer clay and blended until it was similar to the original back. I then shaded it with chalk pastels and baked it again.

After adding a few more finishing touches, like painting on browned/burnt areas and glazing all the toppings, my masterPIZZA was complete! All that was left was to make a tiny pizza box to photograph and store my pizza brooch in. You can find that tutorial here, thanks to Images by Heather M.

Oh pizza, you complete me.

From TMNT and Futurama to late nights gaming, pizza is a huge staple in geek culture. It's easy to come by, reasonably fast, and mostly cheap!

What's your favorite way to enjoy pizza?