Japanese Bento Boxes As Art

I figured you non-glass readers who follow my blog might need a day or two off from my comments about silver glass. What better way to get your attention than to talk about food.

Especially "cute" food. These illustrations show two Japanese Bento Box lunches that are about as artfully arranged, as I've ever seen. ( I have quite a few other photos of great ones too.)

When my kids were little, I drew and decorated their lunchbags, cut their sandwiches into butterflies and other shapes, but believe me, I never put
this amount of energy into it , although, if I had thought about it, I sure would have enjoyed creating some of these fun treasures..

If you aren't familiar with Bento lunches, they can be homemade or purchased as take out. I've seen all kinds of containers- some are beautiful lacquer, and others very nice, but more utilitarian.

But bottom line, (of course a beadmaker feels this way), don't these look like beads with surface decoration? The shaped boxes that contain these little edible works of art, could be bead bases and the the lunch could be decoration on them. I can't help but look at so much life that way.

So if you happen to see Bento Box inspired beads in my Etsy shop in the next couple of days, you'll know where I found my inspiration. I've been making sushi beads for years, so perhaps this is the next step.

See you tomorrow with more thoughts and fresh ideas. Meanwhile enjoy your Friday.

What Big Eyes You Have

I enjoy making little owl beads in bright colors and even sometimes wearing clothes or accessories.

Meet Sven, the uber cool owl.

This time I wanted to change it up a little bit and instead of wearing a necklace, hat or peace symbol, this one has particularly large eyes. Which makes me think this owl has had too much coffee. He looks a little stressed out. I've felt that way plenty of times.

I used commercial murrini for these, because there they were, sitting in my murrini container just staring at me.
(Of course you can easily make them too.)

These give you a good view of how they are made. You can see the center core color which is a dark transparent green, like deep grass green and then opaque white, medium grass green
transparent, opaque white again and then light grass green transparent. The darker core going to a lighter outside color makes the center visually recede.

When I apply murrini, I spot heat the area where the murrini is going and I gently warm the murrini so it doesn't crack when placed on the warm glass. I use my tweezers to place it where I want it to go. At that point it is sticking out a lot. Gently heat the base bead around the edges and again carefully push it a little farther in. If you heat directly onto the murrini and make it too warm, the design will distort. And it seems like the opaque white spreads really easily if too warm. So slightly heat and press over and over until it's in place.

Because the rectangular murrini shape gives him a bit of a 60's mod feel, his eyes definitely have the starring role. I wanted to keep the rest of the bead simple, so it would not distract from them. The back side has his little tail that I make in the shape of a heart.

This bead is less than an inch tall. And if you enjoy a pun or two, I was on quite a roll, when I wrote the description. Click and enjoy. And then go use up some of your old murrini in a bead and send me a photo. And remember, stepping outside of the coloring lines in how you use them makes your beads interesting and unique. I'd love to see what you create.