[Sca-cooks] Re: Cakes

[Elise Fleming]

Nancy Kiel wrote:
> But how do you copy onto rice paper? Can you run it thru a copy 
>machine?

Rice paper (also called wafer paper) is not opaque.  If you place the rice
paper on top of a drawing you can, with proper lighting, see through most
of it, at least well enough to sketch the outline of the item.  For the
spots I can't see, I carefully lift up the paper (to not move it from the
lines I've already done), eyeball where the missing section is and lightly
draw it on.  Usually I use a non-toxic marker - black being the most
commonly used color since it will leave an outline within which I will
paint.  However, other colors can be used.  Regarding non-toxic... Crayola
children's markers are labeled non-toxic.  They are pretty cheap.  I will
also admit to using a black fiber tip pen which has no particular label. 
Most folk aren't going to eat the picture and if they do, there is such a
small amount of fiber-tip-pen ink that it shouldn't do anything to anybody.
If I'm feeling particularly paranoid, I'll use the Crayola marker.  Please
note that there are food-grade markers now available for those who are
really cautious.  They are fairly expensive, at least compared to Crayola
non-toxic markers.  You can also decide that the finished rice paper is not
to be eaten and trace the picture with pencil, although I doubt that eating
faint pencil lines will harm anyone.

If you can't see well enough to copy the picture on a table, you can always
tape both the drawing and the wafer paper to a window and trace that way. 
If the original picture can't be removed from its book, photocopy that and
use the copy to put under the rice paper.  Years ago I purchased an opaque
projector so that I could project an image onto the surface of the rice
paper or cake and directly ice/paint that way.

Alys Katharine

Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/