Takara Town

Japanese Craft Book - Miniatures from Clay - Miniature tutorial

The first miniature craft - made ​​from clay and familiar material - Paperback

Author: Kumi Oikawa

Pages: 128

This book is about how to make miniature food from clay, with really great photographs to help you understand how to make them. 

This is a great book for teenagers, and beginners! 

The front cover alone is filled with many great pictures to inspire you!

I especially love the roll cakes! This book is all about using clay, and other items to make your miniatures. These cakes are a great example of this. You can see how small peices of foil, which you most likely have in your kitchen, are cut into little rounds to hold the cake. 

The tissue paper to hold these miniature tulips is perfect! It looks like tiny newspaper. Any tissue will do, but if you can find something like this in your next box of chocolate candy save it, and use for this application. 

To make tulips : shape with your hand, and then snip the petals in with a little pair of scissors! I like to use the little cosmetic scissors - you know the ones for your eyebrows? Yeah those...they are great! 

Here is a picture from the book that shows the clays and tools they use. 

Here are some great inspirational way to make tiny little plates from clay. Any flat plastic can be used to press the clay flat. It does not have to be clear, but it is much much easier to be know the thickness of the plate to be, if you can see it. 

Anyway you smoosh it flat, then using a little cookie cutter, or shot glass, or something else you can find around the house you cut out the plate so it has clean edges. 

You can then use something like a bottle cap, or essential oil jar to make an impression which will shape the plate into a slight bowl, or give it a rim. 

Here is a really simple and fun way to make a tea cup. This picture is very rustic, but if you were to put a little more time and effort you could achieve something very nice! 

Step One: Shape clay into a ball. 

Step Two: Find a rounded ball point pen to smoosh into the ball of clay to make the cup.

Step Three: You can fill with brown clay to mimic coffee, but for a more realistic effect use some glaze. 
I like Sculpy brand glaze for this. All you gotta do is use a razor blade to scrape some brown pastel chalk into some Sculpy glaze, and stir and stir and stir until it looks like coffee! Then fill the cup with that, instead of the clay, and wait at least 24 hours for it to dry.  

I love some of these easy ideas for working with everyday items, like making this plate from a coffee creamer! It is a great project to do with kids, that is super simple, and cheap. 

If you want something more permanent and sturdy, use this little plate with some mold maker. Once you have the mold made, use polymer clay to make a sturdy and cute little plate. 

Here is another idea of how to make a plate from something you might already have. You can find these little drinkable yogurts on the top shelf over all the other spoonable yogurts at the grocery store. Just cut off the bottom and walah! 

Using the same rounded ball point pen cap as before, you can shape a wine glass! Try using transparent clay for a frosty glass, and don't forget to finish the edge with scissors for a very clean finihsed look. 

This is one of the easiest little teapot tutorial I have ever seen. 

Here is some transparent clay mixed with color to make little frosty glasswear. You can also color with paint. 

This is a great little tutorial on how to make a miniature cucumber for your Japanese Deco projects or dollhouse. The clay is slightly color with a pen, but agian you can use paint or pastels to color it. The clay it semi-transparent, which I agree looks best. The the outside is painted and finally sliced! 

You can also use this method to make a kiwi slice..! 

Once sliced use a Sakura Pen ( fine tip permenent marker) to add some detail! 

 

Next this book teaches how to make the cutest teeny tine raspberries. Simply form with your hand, then use a needle or toothpick to impress little seed texture to the surface. 

 

I hope you enjoyed this book preview! If so please leave a comment. 

Japanese Craft Book - Tutorial on how to make French Macaroons in clay

This is a great 80 page book from Japan, on how to make fake sweets. This is a paperback book, which is part of the Lady Boutique Series # 2960. 

Author: Bell Mountain Flour 

 Ah yes another great Japanese Fake Sweets book. Love it! 

I love that great white truffle chocolate. I think it would be a super cute ring, or perhaps look very nice on a decoden case with fake strawberry whipped cream! yum.

This book has tons and tons of items to make, 100 to be precise! 

So many great ideas all in one little book! 

I think number 5 is wonderful. I want to make these for reals, and in clay! I really like the idea that you do not have to use the same color ont he top and the bottom! 

This picture shows how to use Grace Clay in white, then add Grace color clays in red and blue to the white to make this pretty plum purple color. You can use any type of clay for this, but resin or polymer clays are best for something wearable. Paper or other air dry clay is super easy and good for display or dollhouse items. 

Buy air dry clay for making pretty french macaroons here

I love Mermaid Clay, because it is super soft and easy to work with, and comes in great colors like chocolate and biscuit!

You can color your clay with paint, or ground up pastels if you do not have coloring clay and want something other than what you have. 

Once mixed they use a clear acrylic plastic to smoosh the clay flat. You could use anything that is nice and smooth for the smooshing, but if I were you I would make sure it is clear. When it is not clear it is hard to judge your thickness as you smoosh. 

Then once you have a nice smooshed ball, use an old tablespoon measuring spoon to make the macaroon. You can use a teaspoon too, if you want a smaller macaroon. 

Don't have either of those items, try a lid, or the metal holder for a cheap tea light. 

it is important not to press your measuring spoon all the way through the clay. Press down and make an impression, then use your hands to tear away the remaining clay. 
This gives you a more natural macaroon to start with.

Finally using a toothpick or needle or something pointy ( or even a couple of pointy things) start poking little holes into the clay. Do not go too deep, this is meant to mimic the natural bubble holes that are achieved when making real edible french macaroons. Also try to make your holes as random as possible.
You do not want an even line of all the same size holes.

 Finally you will want to fill your macaroons with fake whipped cream. 

I personally prefer Padico Brand Whipped Cream which comes in four "flavors" ( do not really eat people!) ; Strawberry, Milk, Chocolate, and Clear. 

Buy Padico Whip Cream Here! 

You can also color this whip cream with paint if you prefer a different color such as mango or green tea. Just put desired amount into a piping bag, and smoosh until all mixed up. Then snip off the tip, tape on a piping tip and you are ready to fill the macaroons. 

Also try filling the macaroons with clear whip, that you have added sparkle or micro beads to. 

You can also use hardware store whipped cream, and I do that sometimes when I am totally broke. But that stuff is totally toxic, and smells terrible. I never use it when I am working with kids cause it is so nasty smelling. But it works, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. 

Word of advise though, the clear stuff from the hardware store does not dry clear, and it only gets murkier over time, so I would stay away from the hardware store clear if I were you. Trust me I have tried! 

Anyway this is a great little book, and it has many many more items you can learn how to make in it. I think it is a must for your Japanese Craft book collection! 

Thanks for reading, please comment if you enjoyed this post!

 

Japanese Craft Book - Felt Sweets with no sewing!

Sweets felt put off - take sweets to make every recipe without thread and needle (Lesson Series) Paperback

Author: Sachiko Haraguchi

Publisher: Patchwork Communications, Inc. (2010)

Pages: 81

This is a great little book about making felt cakes and cookies. Many of the techniques require tedious cutting of many many peices of felt and glueing them together. For example the Cheesecake on the cover requires you to glue together 17 triangle peices. The chocolate cake asks you to glue together 22. While very time consuming the end result is very fun, and pretty.

This is not a book for children, or for making childs toys. This is for adults who want to make pretty things to display. 

The other technique used a lot is painting the felt. Sometimes it is painted with varnish, or glue, to give it a nice saucy look. Agian very time consuming but worth it. You can see the look here very well on the little flan puddings. 

The finished products are very small, like palm size or smaller,  but you could easy make larger if you want. Even the small projects use very much felt, so large items will use lots and lots of felt. 

Here you see where the books is showing you how to make all the many layers of your cake. 

 

Here you see how to paint the tops of your cakes to make the shiny glaze. You also see how to finish them with pretty little fruits and such. 

Here you see some ways to make a hollow item and stuff with cotton filler to save felt! 

Look how amazing the glaze on this apple looks. The wool in the felt while painted looks quite pretty. To get this affect many layers will need to be painted on, and it will need ample time to try. 

Japanese Craft Book - making mini fake fruit sweets

 

Corina fruit Paperback by:

Bell Mountain Flour 

Here is the official book description: 

What is making arrangements to infinity Deco fruit! Using this "clay" is colored by paint colors that can be represented for real, and kneaded clay paint to show you how to color white clay and how to color! ! ■ ■ recipe blueberry macaroons · · Boat pineapple and grapefruit bavarois · Orange Watermelon Tropical Punch • The peach and cherry shortcake · · Banana pancakes with kiwi fruit cocktail • The melon ice cream · Apple Strawberry Parfait · · fruit parfait parfait · Drilled 

This is a great book for getting inspired by some really great photograhpy! I just love all the juicy little fruit desserts, and feel completly inspired after flipped through it!

The cover alone will inspire you to try making something totally tasty, and sweet! 


I love the idea of adding some pretty little fruits to a plain macaroon! 

 

I like this idea, but I am thinking a little coconut with a bendy straw, and a slice of pinapple would be more my style. I like the shiny liquid effect seen here. This can be re-created using clay varnish piled on thick! 

 

Same thing here, with this pretty saucy and wet look. I like to use Sculpy brand glaze for this sort of thing. You can shave some color pastels into the glaze and stir really well if you want a tint of color in your liquid. 

I also love this little chocolate dipped banana slice. Check out this tutorial on how to make a banana .

Then use this great chocolate Deco Sauce to top it off : 

Chocolate deco sauce made in Japan by Padico Brand. 

 

Here we see a nice demo for some clay called Freely. I have never seen or heard of this clay before. I tried to do a bit of googling and found nothing. So if any of your reading this know something about this clay, please comment! 

Lastly here is the back cover and information.