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My Oyumaru molds
Hey everyone, i’m super busy right now. My dog Phillip was hospitalised today and may possible require surgery… except he did this by getting a bone stuck in his ass! The issue is the bone is stuck and actually poking into some internal organs… so depending on how far it’s poking in he may need surgery, so i’m waiting for a call for the vet any minute now 
. Needless to say i’m super worried that this might turn into a big issue! EDIT: HE’S FINE! WOOO! He comes home tomorrow!
Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know that Mini Mo has started a forum on deco, so if you love sweets deco, mini sweets, deco, or just anything Japan and crafty, do join! There are not many members yet but let everyone know, hopefully it’ll grow to be big! Also, I have new items at my Etsy, do take a look 
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Today i’ll be showing you guys what I use to make my molds. I’ve used lots of things before, but now use Oyumaru, which is a reusable plastic modelling compound, and it works very well. I’ll be talking about the how to use Oyumaru, tips and tricks and pros and cons with other molding compounds. Just thought I should also take this time to say something potentially controversial, so i’m very sorry! This is entirely, completely my own opinion, so it’s not right and it’s not wrong. Personally I think that if you plan on selling your items as handmade or if you plan on marketing yourself as an ‘artist’ of sorts for these sorts of items, you have to make your own molds. I think it’s wrong to use a pre-made mold only because there is very little work done on your behalf, and most of the work was done by whoever made the mold. If you’re doing this as a hobby, or just as a craft that you wanted to try out, I think it’s fine though, but at the very least if you’re selling, you should make your items from scratch and your molds from scratch. Anyway, slight rant over, time for some mold making!
These two were requested tutorials while I was away. I put these two together because neither is a ‘finished’ item if you know what I mean, I feel like they’re more like tips and techniques than a tutorial. So, really i’ve got two mini tutes for you today and I hope they help you in some way!
Also, i’ve decided to watermark my photos as a precaution. Nothing’s happened yet to me so far (knock on wood, fingers crossed, etc etc) but I just thought I should take precaution instead of relying on luck .
Chocolate Chips
Start by colouring a bit of air dry clay chocolate brown. You could just start off using brown polymer clay but I find air dry clay to look a bit more realistic.
Roll your clay out into very thin sausages.
Let the sausage dry for about an hour or so. Then chop uneven little pieces from the sausage. To use the choc chips, just roll or poke them into your cookie or ice cream, etc.
Note: I don’t know if you can bake air dry clay. My initial reaction is… maybe, but I am not sure at all. So, if you are going to make an item out of polymer clay that needs to be baked and you can’t attach your choc chips by glue, I suggest making polymer clay choc chips. They won’t look as realistic but at least you can bake them with your item without worry .
Inserting eyepins into donuts
To tell you the truth i’m sure there is an easier way out there. The way I do it is really fiddly, but so far I haven’t been able to come up with a better way so i’ll show you the stupid way that I put eyepins into donuts for now .
First, put your eyepin on top of the donut. You want to trim the pin so that the end only just sticks out of the middle hole, around where the red mark is in the photo.
Using pliers, slightly bend the trimmed eyepin.
This is the part that gets fiddly, and I don’t even have a photo for it. Very carefully insert the bend eyepin into the donut. Try to keep the hole as small as possible while you’re doing this, because the whole point of doing this is so that after baking, because the wire is bent, the wire should technically not be able to come out very easily because of the fact that it’s bent. Of course the bigger the bend the more secure it will be, but it will also be harder to insert. Try your best and prepare to be frustrated .
I hope these have helped, now i’m off to write more in my travel guide .
I’m so sorry about the camera issue… it wasn’t really a technical issue, I just couldn’t find my charger haha… but i’ve found it now, so i’m back! So I said berries were up next on this sweets deco tute but I just remembered that I already have a tute for strawberries and blueberries. So i’ve updated the existing one here with an additional raspberry tute. Therefore today’s tutorial is actually the final one: how to put it all together . Yay!
This is my premade stash of deco parts. Eventually i’ll probably teach you guys how to make everything from it, but for this series of tutorials i’ll teach macarons, ice cream, cookies, wafers and berries. In my opinion those are the most common parts used in sweets deco, and also the easiest. The difference between making sweets jewellery and parts for deco is that you want to keep it as simple as possible for deco. For one, you’ll be using so many parts that if you made each deco part as detailed as possible you’d be there for months! And the other thing is, sweets deco is a very over-the-top cute decor style, anything too realistic and detailed and it’ll just look odd. Anyway, today i’ll be teaching you how to make the macaron, which, in my opinion is one of the most basic parts of sweets deco.
First, good news! This blog is now mapped to a domain now! The domain is ‘www.hikaria.com’ and I decided to take it before it got taken again. Actually, I wanted ‘hikaria.net’ because I used to own that domain, but unfortunately it appears to be some sort of fantasy French website now. I was pretty sad about it because it’s like having someone move into your old house that you still want to live in, but oh well. Hikaria.com it is!
When I first got into sweets deco I tried to look online for a comprehensive tutorial on how to do it. I found bits and pieces here and there but nothing comprehensive. I really want to make a big, big tute on sweets deco where I try to cover as much as possible so that it’ll all be covered in one place step by step. I’ll aim to cover the basics of sweets deco so that you can (hopefully!) design your own deco as opposed to following a project step-by-step. So, here I am making a large multi-part tutorial on sweets deco. Let’s start!
