DIY Faux Hot Chocolate & More

Last week I shared my first 'fake bake' project- these faux Christmas cookies. In that post I mentioned Cristal Gonzalez and her Facebook page Glittz and Glue, where I have been inspired to make so many wonderful fake food items. My favorite so far are the artificial hot cocoa drinks like you see in the photo above 😍

Today I'm going to walk you through how easy these are to put together, but if you want to see Cristal's full video tutorial (which I totally recommend!), click here.

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Here is my collection of faux holiday drinks so far. All of the glassware and paper straws I found at Dollar Tree. The joint compound ('icing'), Sculpy modeling clay ('marshmallows') and acrylic paint I picked up at Walmart.

I'm going to start with the most basic faux drink, a solid mug hot cocoa. The first thing that you do is to cut a cardboard tube to fit within the mug and hot glue into place. A paper towel roll will do just fine, but I prefer to use the rolls that come with my Cricut vinyl as they are super sturdy. I also cut my tube just a bit shorter than my mug so that the rim of the mug is taller.

The next thing you will need is to cut a piece of foam board ($1 at Dollar Tree or .88 at Walmart) to fit the interior of the mug. Just trace the mug and cut out making it a bit smaller than the mug, and glue the foam board onto the cardboard tube. I like to have a small gap between the mug and the foam board that I can fill in with the joint compound, it seems to make things much sturdier

*Make sure you are using foam board and not poster board as poster board will not be strong enough.

With the foam board in place it's time to add the 'icing'. Just fill a pastry bag with light weight spackle/ joint compound (you can see the brand that I prefer here). This was my first attempt at a faux drink and I started off with a Dollar Tree icing bag...which ripped right open almost immediately! I think I moved to quickly to squeeze and the pressure was too much for the bag. I switched to a regular old freezer bag and it worked just fine. I learned that if you hold the 'icing' in your palm for a bit to warm it up, it flows much more easily. I also found that when adding the layers of piped-on spackle, the weight of the top layers can cause the bottom ones to shift towards the sides, and even spill down the mug.

You can't see it from this photo, but I now like to take a rubber scraper spatula and spread a layer of the joint compound over the foam board before piping on the icing. This helps to keep the layers of piping in place and prevents spillage. I also discovered that you don't need to add all of the layers at once. By adding one layer at a time you can let the joint compound firm up and it stays put better.

Lastly, I figured out that plain spackle holds up the best. If you wish to color it you can add a bit of paint, but depending upon how much it may sort of liquify the joint compound and make it flimsy. If this happens you can mix in some flour to help add more structure.

After getting the spackle to look the way I wanted (first time so I think I ended up scraping it off and starting over 3 times!), I stuck in a short length that I cut from a paper straw. If you cut the end of the straw at an angle, it slides into the joint compound a lot easier 😉

I also wanted to add some faux sprinkles but didn't have any on hand. After looking at a few of my Dezi Cakes (post here) I realized that I could make similar with a hole punch and foam craft sheets. These worked really well and I stuck them in while the joint compound was still wet.

My next project was to use clear glassware that would allow me to see the 'drinks' inside. For this all you need to do is mix some paint in the color of your choice (I did one in milk chocolate and one in dark chocolate) with the spackle and use a spatula to apply it to the inside of the mug/ glass. Once the joint compound/ paint mixture is in place, add your cardboard tube and foam board in the same way as described earlier, then pipe on your 'icing'.

I topped my cocoa mugs with chocolate drizzle (paint) and Sculpy marshmallows (clay) before sticking in a paper straw. I love how they turned out!

Like the Hot Cocoa printable? You can find it here.

Here are all of my lovely drinks together, I ended up doing strawberry and mint holiday shakes as well as a collection of cocoas. Once you get the hand of piping on your joint compound, you can really get creative with embellishments. I used a variety of paper straws, beads, foam punch outs, clay marshmallows, tiny gingerbread figures and puffy paints to get the looks that I wanted.

And that's how easy it is to make faux hot chocolates!

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to decor post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

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This post was added to the following link parties:

You're The Star

The Really Crafty Link Party

Craftastic Monday

All About Home

Meraki

Wonderful Wednesday (Oh My Hearstie Girl)