These tiny donuts are made from Fimo, a polymer clay. I really enjoy making miniature items, especially adding in all the detail.

First, I create a “master” donut, from which I will make a push mould. This is so I only have to do a detailed sculpt once. I choose a few different types of donuts to make masters of, as each of these types were quite different: raised yeast, cake, old-fashioned, bar and filled. I didn’t create masters for the cinnamon roll or twist because the undersides of those wouldn’t work with a push mould. The push moulds are two-part silicone putty, so they are flexible.

After creating the moulds, I can make multiples of each type of donut. Each copy only requires minimal sculpting to clean up the flat bottom, extraction damage and making it just a bit different so they don’t look too much the same. The basic donut clay is made from a mix of fimo colours in the lightest colour the donut will be, rather like unbaked dough.

I paint each donut with chalk pastel powder, mixed in a few shades, so that each donut looks like it’s been baked. This lets me add features, such as the light stripe around a raised yeast donut, slightly darker edges on the old-fashioned to mimic baking and the cinnamon filling each of the roll and twist. Then the donuts are baked to set them.

Here are some of my tools and materials:

After being set, I add further detail in the form of the coloured glazes. Each glaze is hand mixed with the coloured fimo clay and liquid fimo, and the end result is very much like actual food glaze. I also create and bake a small strip of green and yellow mixed fimo to create pistachio nuts. To make the nuts, I use a craft knight to chop and dice bits of the green roll into a chopped nuts consistency. I glaze the donuts I wish to glaze and add decorations such as the chopped nuts, nail art microbeads to mimic sprinkle, speckle the roll and twist with pastel powder to mimic cinnamon flecks, and use a toothpick to create two colour glaze designs.

The donuts are baked again to set the glaze. This makes the finish of the glaze matte, so after cooling, I paint each area of glaze with one coast fimo glossy finish to make it satin shiny again.

Here there is a 5p coin for scale. The large round donuts are about 1.2cm in diameter.