Krispy Kreme Donuts

Created for the Intro to Prop Making course I completed last year, the original brief was to make plaster casts of bagels and decorate them as donuts. I wanted to push myself a little further and try to replicate something more distinctive with more detail, so I chose three Krispy Kreme donuts to replicate.

A generic donut shape was formed from air-drying clay and cast within an alginate mold.

Plaster casts were then taken from the alginate mold. Usually silicone would be used for making multiple casts but I was able to get three casts from this mold.

The plaster casts were painted with acrylic paint, including the pale ring around the centre.

More acrylic paint was used for the icing. This was my first time using acrylic paints and was please when first applied as they looked like fresh icing…

…as the paint dried however, they lost their shine and looked more matte finish, with some cracks appearing where the paint was particularly thick. Learning - should have done a paint test!

The toppings were made from polymer clay. Once baked, there is a short window of time where the clay is still hot and not fully rigid. This meant it could be immediately broken up to give naturally rough or jagged edges which looked like the pink or chocolate crumbles or broken shards of white chocolate. Below you can see side by side comparisons of the prop donuts and Krispy Kremes they were based on.

A paint glaze was added to bring back the sugary shine. I was very happy with the colour of the donuts and effects of the toppings. If I were to do this project again, I would look into other types of effect for the icing and aim to get closer colour matches.