Pasta

Joe was running low on TP so he stopped in at his local supermarket to pick some up.

Turns out they were having a sale on pasta—three boxes for two dollars!—so he figured he'd stock up.

He got several different kinds because of course the variety of shapes are fun; though he also got some regular old spaghetti.

They each have a different recipe on the back. Joe might try some, if he's feeling ambitious. Alas, he's not really much of a cook.

Luckily for Joe, they also have some simple stir-in ideas on the side, if he's not quite up to attempting Mama's Artichoke Pasta Salad.

Oh, and he also got his toilet paper. It's just the store brand, nothing fancy.

***
So, this is what happens when I get a new printer for my birthday (yay!); I make ridiculous printables for Joe's (someday) kitchen. By which I mean, I spent way too much time designing the pasta boxes, coming up with the brand name, the copy (including the story of Maria-Louise Caroni), the recipes, &c. But it's so much fun. I did the little Hamm's brown paper bags too, printed on cut up lunch bags. I'm really very pleased with them.

Oh, and I (digitally) painted the portrait of Maria-Louise in the style of over-enthusiastic hopped up on Little Yellow Pills '50s housewife art (it's a genre!)

Here's her story, from the back:

After her husband was killed in the Great War, Maria-Louise was left with seven hungry children to feed. But she also finally found the freedom to pursue her dream of starting a business making pasta using only the finest of ingredients.

Heh.

While I didn't actually test any of the recipes, they're at least plausible. I may try some for real, just to see.

The pasta boxes are filled with seed beads; it gives a nice weight to them, while they also make something like the right noise. The spaghetti is filled with bristles from a house painting brush, cut to the right length. Not that you can see them; I very deliberately left out the little clear windows that pretty much every pasta brand has these days, because I really didn't want to have to make all those tiny little pasta shapes out of polymer clay, yikes.

They're on glossy photo paper, which turned out to be just the right weight to look like one sixth scale cardboard. They're probably a little bit too glossy for my tastes, but they work well enough. They're also printed out at 600 dpi, which means the tiny type is readable, if your eyes are good enough (mine just about are). Not that my blurry photos are doing them justice, I know.

I think I'm going to start Joe's house with a room box of his kitchen, since I've never made a dollhouse before. It'll allow me to work out placement and such, and hopefully I can just reuse the furnishings when I get to doing the real thing.