He's my Lobster!

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At some point in our relationship, I told Dan he was my lobster. I'm preeeeeetty sure he thought I was an absolute nutter. I then realized that men don't consider Friends to be a religion like women do and found him the episode where Phoebe announces that Rachel and Ross are lobsters. They walk around on the bottom of the ocean holding claws, mates for life. He got it, but now thinks I'm a cute nut if nothing else. He has also been known to watch Friends with me since I have shown him the light ;)

So anywho, since the day of the lobster, we have this weird thing (among many weird things) that when we're feeling mushy and sweet, we link our thumbs and forefingers together a la little claws and announce "Lobsters!" to each other. Yes we do this in front of other people who also now think we're BOTH nuts.

Now to take the craziness a step further, I made a "Lobsters!" cake topper. Yep, you read that right. Although neither of us particularly want a big frou-frou wedding cake, we each have about 4 ideas for cake toppers. Naturally this means a dessert buffet with many cakes and many cake toppers. Darn. Twist my rubbery-cake-lovin-arm!

I know at this point you're all begging to know, how does one make a lobster cake topper? Well let me show you!

First, Google image search "lobster". You'll find an image like this:

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Then I decided for whatever reason (and mainly I think because of my new smelly Smencil crayons) to draw said lobster claw so I could understand the ways of the claw.

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I picked up some red sparkly polymer clay from my local Michaels and set to sculpting! I did a little online research and found out a few important things. First, this is scary stuff. It's full of chemicals that are not so good for you. Whatever surface you bake the stuff on, you don't want to use it for food again. I put a double layer of parchment paper under my clay to bake it on so I wouldn't be putting it directly on the sheet. Secondly, there's not a lot of beginners information out there. A lot of the info relates to how to make fancy beads and whatnot, so it's a bit of a trial by error unless you have a book or a friend who knows what they're doing.

To start, the clay needs to be warmed up a little. I bought two packs not knowing how much I'd need, so I tucked one inside my bra while I warmed the other up in my hands. I kneaded it until it was pretty pliable/sculptable. Then I tore a hunk off and started making a claw! I used a wooden skewer to add some of the toothy like detail on the claws. That's about it really. I made two claws, interlocked them together, and then threw them in the oven for about 45 minutes at the temperature recommended on the package. It's important to use this temperature because if you bake it at a higher temperature you could release some very toxic fumes into your oven and heaven knows we don't want to eat toxic chicken for dinner so don't take a short cut on this people! However it looks when you put it in the oven is pretty much how it'll look when it comes out, it's no big mystery. It doesn't really expand or contract, it just is what it is.

Here's our lobsters cake topper!

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All in all, it was a quick and easy project. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, although I'm certainly not expecting many people at the wedding to understand the reference. As a sidenote, much to my dismay Wikipedia has dispelled the Friends lobster myth: "Lobsters do not mate for life, contrary to some myths. The female seeks the most alpha male she can find, and the male will mate with as many females as he can." Ahhh so true my lobster friends, so true.