Kae-Sa-Luk: Watermelon Cut

The third bird that I am going to show you is a huge centerpiece but this will not take too long of the time.

Look at this watermelon. Summer time, we always get a nice watermelon and cheap and I like to work with it. The watermelon that I got or you will get, you can use is a round one or the oblong one. And this can be some—I like to use a seedless one but sometime the suppliers do not allow me to have the seedless one then I use the one that I can get. So, for today I am going to show you this one is kind of not too long and not too round and we got this. Imagine this is the body of the bird. Remember, have your engine of imagination running at all time. This is the body of the bird. Now, before I am going to do anything I like to level the bird first so when I work with it or I put on the display, it will not be rocking.

So, this is how I do. I will cut, straight cut at the bottom, that’s it. Now, since the bottom is cut and leveled, when you place it on it is not rocking anymore. So, we are going to work with the hump of the bird. Imagine, this is the body of the bird and we will make it with the hump of the bird. This time we will be a little bit challenged. I am to teach how to make a simple cut to make this bird beautiful. Let us try with this knife. I have this bird big knife and I use it all the time. And do not forget to have glasses since I am not that young anymore. So, I will make the hump. Just cut, make a line hold the knife like you hold a pencil.

And then, we will skin off the top part. Let’s change the knife. Did you see that this turntable is very useful for me to work on big projects like watermelon? By this way, when I have to work on a different side of the watermelon, I do not have to lift and turn it by myself. I just let the table work it for me.

At the edge like this, I have to use a small knife because there is some curve that you have to work with. Again, there is no specific rule that—what kind of knife that you have to use. Whenever you feel comfortable and that knife will do the work for you. Now, the most difficult parts are done, let’s use the bigger knife to peel off the rest of them. When I peel the watermelon, I will make sure that I would not take all the white off so by this way when I carve or I put the feathers onto that, the white part will be the tip of the flowers or the feather that I have created. Skinning off is very time consuming and this is the only time that would take much time from you on this centerpiece. But make sure you make it nicely first.

Now, that I have the hump ready for me to make the wedge cut off. I am going to show you this technique we call “chrysanthemum-cut technique”. So, we will use a longer knife that had a radius inside, radius, sharp. Hold the knife and at the middle of it, just make a wedge cut-off. Slant your knife to the left hand side. And at the end of the middle, lift your knife up, slant your knife on the other side with the same depth in, you will have a joint cut underneath. So the next one, look at what I do the wedge cut off, slant your knife to the left hand side place it in and then stop at the middle of the triangle. Just flip your knife on the other side and then place it in with the same depth. You would be able to take a piece off. If you cannot take it in one cut, then you will have to make a repeated cut. This is a surface that we are going to make a feather, along with it, but this time we just go along the surface that allows stop right at the middle and not to cut it off. We would do this again next to each other.

When you are slanting your knife and put in the same depth on the opposite angle you will have a joint cut underneath that is why you will be able to take the wedge cut off. Remember when we make the feather we will not try to cut it off. You may have to lift the watermelon and tilt it a little bit in order to get the position that you are comfortable with.

When you are confused of the cut that I made, just keep thinking as a formula of cutting, take the wedge cut off and at the surface, we are going to make a feather. And leave it in there. On the second layers, let us lift it tilt it so I can work on it and in a position that I am comfortable. So, I will do it in the middle of these two feathers above. This is the—the wedge cut off, then the feather. Again, this is the top two feathers cut off right in the middle of it. The reason I choose this cutting technique to make these kinds of this centerpiece because this cut is simple and also, you do not have to think too much of where to put the feathers because the space just allow you to put only one space, one particular one, right in the middle of it. And also the look of the cut, it looked like a feather.

People asked me that, “So, what size of the feather should I make Pam?” It is up to you and up to the size of the watermelon that you have. Like this time since I see the watermelon is nice and big, so I try to make a bigger feather as I can in order to make it balance to the size of the watermelon. All right this time, I am jammed with this piece, all I have to do is try to make a repeated the cut and I would be able to take it off. When you make a repeated cut, this means that you cut a little bit deeper, slanting your knife more. The idea is how we can get there. Get the joint cut underneath. And then the feather, look at this space it is so little but then again right in the middle of it. I just cut it off so I would not have a hard time and then I make it again right there, repeat it.

A nice clean cut is going to make this bird more beautiful so if you cannot get a piece off, do not try to take it because that will make the cut not clean cut. And the sharpness of the knife, it will also help you in making a nice clean cut too.

When you make big feathers, it mean that you are going to finish it very soon but if you have more time and you think that you want to play with it, you may make it a small feathers small wedge cut off but this way you had more of the feather-like all over the body. When you hold the knife, you are trying not to hold too tight or too loose. Too tight will make your knife that too stiff and cannot turn around the corner nicely and too loose that you will have a chance of dropping your knife. A confident cut like I showed you do not come overnight. This comes with some practice so do not be afraid to just punch your knife in and go for it. Do not press your knife in and out and not sure of what you are going to do. By that way, you might end up to have a very lousy cut.

This long bread knife will give me a chance to go very deep. Sometime you work with a seed watermelon then you just do not worry about the seed that is in there, just leave it there. So, we can prove to everyone that this is a real watermelon that we worked on it because sometimes people do not believe that you have worked with watermelon. They just keep thinking, “Is that plastic?” It is so funny when we see plastic that may look like watermelon with a cut that looks good. And now we look—made watermelon look like plastic.

Every time that I teach the student I teach the student on how to make a centerpiece, for the first piece that the student make and I told them that today we are going to ruin that watermelon and they will say, “Why Pam, why do we have to ruin that watermelon?” “Because if you would not plan to ruin watermelon and then you will be too stiff and you will be too attached to that, okay this piece have to be perfect.” The perfect does not come overnight. The perfect come with your practice. So ruining the watermelon on the first time is not a bad idea at all, at least it can relax you of carving, it can make your expectation go a little bit lower so your work would be nicer. I do not try to ruin your confidence but that is the technique that I always tell the student to do, plan to ruin one, the first one. I have some student who was so fussy about making the first watermelon and it does not look like mine. And I said that, “If you make the first one and look like mine, I will be crying because I have made thousand of them.” So do not give up, practice make perfect.

Cut the wedge off then place the knife in halfway, stop, pull your knife back, flip it and go with the surface that will allow you. This surface only allows me to only do half then I would do half. Make more repeated cut, make it deeper because this means that we did not go deep enough to make a joint cut underneath. Right in the middle of it, make a wedge cut off, slanting your knife, place the knife in onto the surface, make an opposite cut, leave that feather in. Again, a wedge cut off, then the feather. The wedge cut off, then the feather. The wedge cut off—this space is so small so we will make a small wedge cut off. Make a centerpiece like this, as I told you, is more like a free hand. There is no particular size of the wedge cut off that you have to make. You just make as you pleased. You just make as you see it fit.

Sometimes when you make a centerpiece, do not just buy one watermelon, buy more than one because you never know what the inside look like. Last time when I make a centerpiece, when I cut in to that in a curve halfway then I found out that this part of the watermelon is not whole anymore because it is kind of too ripe. And then I have to finish the project at that time and have to change it to a new watermelon. That is why I always have more than one in my stock before I would be making any centerpiece. By this way, I do not have to be frustrated with the bad one and/or have to run out to buy a new one. We are almost there.

At the end like this, all you have to do is just skin off and take this part of. So, you can get the feather stand out. Do some touch-up because sometime when you do the carving and you go without, you know, it’s not neat look like this part, I will just make another nice clean cut. And go back to sometime in the wedge cut off is not clean, make a repeated cut, deeper and in the same manner and take it off. Just do not dig anything out because you are going to ruin the surface.

The beauty of this, come from the crispy cut of fruit and vegetable. Now, that I think I already show you how to make the feather-like body of the bird. Now, it is time to attach the head onto it. Before I attach it to it and we are looking for something like this yellow squash and then I would just try to attach to that. How about if we will put it a little bit further on. By this way, the bird will stay on that and tilt the bird on this side just a little bit but before I put it attach to that so I have to skin off some of that. Now, it is nice. So, let us do it again, use bamboo skewer. Push it through, use two of them at least. Now it is secure. Snip off the excess part. For the eyes, we will use the birds eyes onto that but you can with the bigger size of the eye since this is pink color.

And now the beak, this beak I pre-made it, but I will show you how to make it from carrot. So we get a baby carrot, get a knife and then you just make like a nice quite beak, cut a little bit right here, just simple just make a beak-look shape. And then you can attach it right here. I have already done this and good to attach it, we use the toothpick. Well, just simple, just pre-done that and just put it into the disk. The reason I put in the carrot first is because it is hard to push in and then cut excessive part of and now I attach it to the drilled hole that I made. For the crowns of it, you can use any things. So, I used flower on the crown. Again, use some toothpick on the top, snip some part of, snip it light, more like pointed one. And if you would choose some of Lily of the Nile that I get it from my yard. We get the crown from the Lily of the Nile. We get the body that we carve. We get the eyes, the artificial eyes, the beak from carrot, the neck and head from yellow squash.

Now, we come to the tails. This time I am going to show you that if I will not use the fruit because we already had a lot of fruit and vegetable, we are going to use flowers that I brought from the forest yesterday. I just buy some of the forest flowers and I buy variety of a color and texture and some of them from my backyard. So, this is what we are going to do. This part is very hard. Let me move this one a little bit. This part it is very hard to stick any flowers in so I will skin off some greenish. Give some room for the flower to stick in. I think I have enough of that, if my body of the bird is done with the wedge cut, chrysanthemum-cut technique. We have the head summer squash. We have eye from artificial eyes that I buy from Art and Craft Store. I have the crown of Lily of the Nile. If you do not have this flowers do not worry about it, anything would work as long as you make this bird look elegant. It is time to make the tails. So, I normally will stick the tail in at this site, in the inside and I would, right now, I am going to put this on the stand that I am going to display. And then I will show you how I put the tails in.

This is the stand that I am going to use to put my bird in but I would talk about the stand a little bit because it just look so unusual and you do not see much in the market. What we would do with this stand originally come with the orchids and after the orchids die, then I have asked my husband to make it for my centerpiece. And this thing that he had put it in so it will help me to secure the bird or any centerpiece that I have. And I am going to get my body of the bird and put it here. So, I will put the bird in here. And now, I am going to use flowers that I had buy and also some of them like this one that I cut it from my backyard as the tail of the birds. We make a snipping cut, slanted so after you put it into the bird then this will be able to—as osmosis some water or some glucose from the watermelon and then on and on with different kinds of flowers that we bought from the market.

When I make a centerpiece this big, I always—onsite setting because if I finish it at home and the whole thing finished, I am not be able to transfer this bird to the party site. There is no particular rules about what kinds of flowers should you need or how you stick it in, you can just put it in like you hold a bunch of this and you want to put it in one time you can do this so—just press it in as the space allow. The variety of color and type of the flowers will help make this tail nice.

Now, you can start to see that the bird had a very beautiful tails. When you work onsite, sometimes it is not that convenient because the stand is there and then some other things around it for the party so it is a little bit that you have to work around your project. It is just like flower arrangement but this is more easy than flower arrangement because like I said you do not have to worry about the length or the angle have to be perfect. This bunch of flowers, I bought it for 9.99 and it is good for the tails. And if you want to put more flower in, you can. And then, let us try to put it all in, let us see what it would look like.

I always go to the back of the bird too because by this way we can get the depth nicely. Snipping a little bit because it is so—when we punch the flowers into the watermelon, do not worry that the flower will be bad soon because the flower be able to osmosis water or glucose from the watermelon and will stay fresh as long as the water is still fresh.

I think this should be nice, now the bird is finished, with a bunch of flower from 9.99 and a bunch of flowers from my backyard and the bird is done for your party or for your friend. Do not forget to name your bird.

Now, that we are done with all of the centerpiece, this centerpiece from pineapple and all the fruits tail. The second one is from cantaloupe is a deep bowl, all you can put any fruits into that with the bird of paradise, head and beak and now the watermelon that we have with chrysanthemum cut technique and all the flowers arrangement on the tails. Remember, have your engine of imagination running at all times and do not be afraid of making a mistake.

I am the living proof because of all the mistakes that I have made and here I am today Pam Maneeratana, the master of food and vegetable carving. Good luck to you all and see you next time.


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