Schnauzer Dog Tutorial

If you are going to attempt making one of these, bear in mind that you will need a steady hand and a lot of patience… along with the following equipment :)

• Two polystyrene balls, one slightly bigger than the other
• A cocktail stick
• A plastic cake dowel
• Small embroidery scissors (brand new and sterilised)
• Large kitchen knife
• Grey and white fondant
• Small paint brush and water

I decided to make the dog out of polystyrene so he could be kept instead of eaten and I therefore started the process with two polystyrene balls that I attached to each other using a cocktail stick. The larger ball formed his head while the smaller one made his nose.

Before attaching them, I shaved the edge off both balls so they sat together flush with two flat edges rather than curves. I also cut the top off the smaller ball to give the nose a better shape. See below:

I then began to form the shape of his head by filling in the gaps where the two balls met with pieces of fondant. Basically use the fondant like putty and squidge it into the gaps, moulding it around the polystyrene balls until you have the desired head shape. Then insert your dowel into the base of the dog’s head and stand that in a cake dummy, piece of foam etc. so you can work on him without having to hold him.

Next, I shaped both his nose and his eyes out of black fondant and stuck them on as I wanted the fur to be around and over them.

Now comes the time consuming bit! The fur…

To make the fur I used strips of fondant in various shades of grey which I then cut using small embroidery scissors. See pic below.

I made little snips all the way along the fondant strip and then folded that in half in order to achieve a fluffier fur look. I cut a few of these at a time and stuck them on the head using water whilst still pliable so I could maipulate the shape of the fur as I went along. I started at the base of the head and worked my way upwards towards the ears.

This continued for quite some time… snipping and sticking, snipping and sticking :)

As I moved round to the sides of the head, I changed the direction slightly of the fur as it does on a real dog and changed the shades of grey. I was working from a picture of the actual dog so just adjusted the colour according to the picture. As I built up the sides of the face, the fur needed to get longer so instead of using my scissors to make little snips in the fondant, I cut a much wider strip and used a kitchen knife to cut long pieces. I found that in order to give the long fur some volume, I needed to put some shorter pieces underneath to help it stand out.

I worked my way up the sides of the nose and over the top then worked backwards to where the ears were meant to be. These were the last thing to be attached because I wanted the fur underneath to support them. The ears were cut and moulded from thick fondant until I was happy with the shape and then snipped with the very tip of the scissors to rough them up a bit.

And that is basically it… the method wasn’t particularly complicated, just very time consuming! Feel free to ask any questions because whilst this makes sense in my head, I appreciate it might not in everyone else’s :-D

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