I’m a fan of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. My wife found me a reasonable facsimile of the Wally World moose mug that Cousin Eddie uses in the movie. It is real glass, not plastic. I would like to make it look as if it is filled with eggnog so I can have it out as a Christmas decoration. (It doesn’t really have much pizzazz as an empty glass mug.)
Any ideas?
My first thought was to get an appropriately-scented candle, melt the wax, and then pour it into the mug (without the wick, of course). Is there an alternative? And does anyone know where I might find an eggnog-scented candle?
There are plenty of things you can put in that glass to simulate eggnog. There is an entire industry of simulated food for various purposes. They would usually fill it with something like polyester resin appropriately colored, maybe even with some little spots of simulated nutmeg and some naturally looking froth at the edge to make it look like it was fresh poured.
However, I think your scented candle wax idea is excellent. For one thing it’s not permanent, and if it doesn’t look right you can melt out the wax and do it over again until you think you have it right. There are plenty of eggnog scented candles available, you just have to look.
BTW, the simulated food techniques are fascinating. I watched a documentary where they went through the process of developing glasses of champagne. They tried various combinations of clear resin slight tinged with some color and then something used to create bubbles in it that would remain until the resin set. They had to experiment until they found the way to get bubbles that looked just like the real thing. For any type of food they would find the way to duplicate the colors, the apparent texture, the reflectivity of moist and wet surfaces, really fantastic stuff.