Chennai girl creates enticing food miniatures

It was Rupashree’s parents, who discovered her creative streak and asked her to pursue Visual Fine Arts at Stella Maris College. Looking back, she thinks it’s been one of the best decisions yet in her life, so far! She has enjoyed pursuing the course thoroughly and it has helped in honing her skills. 

The culmination of this creative spirit is Charming Miniatures, a blog site that showcases her exquisite collection of food miniatures. Her tiny creations are made with polymer clay, but with as much love and care as any chef would put into their dishes. 

Cute little platters of idli sambhar, vada, dosa and south Indian meals are pleasing to the eye and one would immediately want to take a bite or two out of them, sadly you can’t! “I plan to begin with Indian dishes, more of south Indian dishes for a start, but will gradually add on to the range, including some of the exotic global fare dished out all over India and globally. You will be able to catch the passion of a foodie flowing through these artistic creations,” she says. 

Even as a five-year-old child, Rupashree loved playing with miniature toys of cooking vessels, stoves, spoons, ladles, cutlery and all those things. “With my mom in the kitchen, I would also act like I was a good cook too and churn out mini dishes. I would excitedly use the dough of wheat flour to make miniatures of all sorts of things. I didn’t realise that over the years my hobby had grown into an all-consuming passion. Into my first year of college I had also started to sculpt and replicated quite a few dishes in miniature forms,” she puts forth. 

She uses polymer clay that can be easily baked. She paints on the clay structures to make it look real and then bakes it in a real oven. This makes it look as real as possible. Rupashree intends to create a niche for herself in Indian food miniatures in the future. “I have not seen much of the Indian food in miniatures. I want to see how exclusive I can get. I love creating them and hope to flourish in the segment in near future,” she says.