bento#22 Farm bento left side December 30, 2008
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - original.Tags: animals, bento, charaben, kyaraben
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This is the second part of my “Farm bento.” I’m going to write about the left side of the bento.
Bento#22: Farm bento left side
Created and eaten on: 11/09/2008
Just like the right side, I put rice where the road would be, and then I put “soboro” (ground beef with soy sauce, cooking sake, and sugar) on the rice. I filled both sides of the road with lettuce and broccoli, and put a sunflower (see “how to make a sunflower”), a sausage flower (see “how to make sausage flowers”), carrot flower (see “how to make vegetable flowers”) and a ladybug.
Then I put an escaping piglet (potato salad wrapped with ham) on the road. (see “Farm bento right side” for more about the piggy)
I know a dog isn’t exactly a “farm animal”, but when I was drawing the sketch for this bento, I thought it’d be cute if a puppy was chasing animals at a farm, so I added it in the drawing. I cut cheese out for each piece for the puppy, put it on seaweed and cut around it. Seaweed serves as a plate for cheese and makes it easier to move around. Also seaweed provides cheese a nice black outline.
For the sheep, I made two small rice balls, but to make them “fluffy” I didn’t shape them tightly like I usually do. Then I cut ham for their face and ears, put them on cheese and cut around them. Then I used a hole punch to make their “smiling eyes.”
The hard boiled egg chicken was something I had made BEFORE my first kyaraben. (It’s not even on my flickr. It’s on my boyfriend’s flickr… but don’t go look for it! It’s utterly embarrassing) It made my boyfriend go “Awwwww” for the first time and made me want to keep making kyaraben. =D It is a special “food animal” for me and I even made it for Kick in the Head comic bento. For the first one, I used a lemon peel for its beak, but this time, I cut a small piece of left over egg sheet for its beak. Then I sliced carrot for its crown and I used a hole punch to cut seaweed for its eyes.
I made this bento on a Sunday because I made this bento for a contest, and I wanted to make sure that I could finish it. So my boyfriend and I both got to eat this bento at home. 🙂 Eating bento at home is also fun. It’s kinda like an indoor picnic.
What happened to the lunch box contest?
Well, I submitted the picture, and saw a confirmation page telling me that the picture was sent successfully. But I got worried and emailed them to make sure they got it, and a couple of days later they emailed me back and told me that they never received it. By the time they emailed me, it was already past the deadline for the contest. I worked pretty hard on this bento so I wasn’t happy about it then. But after my boyfriend put the pictures of farm bento up on his flickr, some people from Bento groups on flickr made farm themed bentos telling me that my bento inspired them! You have nooooo idea how happy that made me feel! It instantly made everything so worth it! So in the end the contest didn’t matter to me at all. Besides, the contest made me come up with my first original bento. 🙂
Road:
– soboro (ground beef with soy sauce, cooking sake, and sugar) over rice
Pig:
– potato salad wrapped with ham
– fake sausage (fish cake) for its face, ears, and legs (legs are held in place with uncooked pasta)
– seaweed for its eyes and mouth
Dog:
– cheese on seaweed
Sheep:
– rice
– cheese on ham & seaweed for its tail, face and ears
Chicken:
– egg with seaweed and carrot for its eyes and egg for its beak
Sunflower:
– egg and sausage
Ladybug:
– cherry tomato and seaweed
Carrot flower:
– carrot
Sausage flower:
– fake sausage with egg sheet in the center
Fence:
– fried potato
Other food:
– lettuce
– broccoli
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
bento sketch book #1 December 28, 2008
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - bento sketches.Tags: bento, charaben, kyaraben, sketches
8 comments
It’s Sunday! but since it’s holiday season and all, no how-to today… Sorry!
But instead, I’m going to post some of the sketches I’ve done for my bento. If you compare the sketches and finished bento, you can see what I intended to do but couldn’t do.
Before I started doing sketches for bento, I kind of just filled the bento box as I made it, and it was so hard to do.
Half of the time, I didn’t know which food I’d be using until that morning. Also I’d often just throw food in to fill spaces. It was frustrating and the results didn’t please me at all… So I started drawing sketches for bento.
I gotta tell you, these sketches help a LOT. The rectangular shape is the same size as the bottom part of bento box, so I know how big the characters should be. (I still make characters a little too big though) I write down what color each character & decoration is, what kind of food I’ll be using, and what order I’ll put it together, etc… Unfortunately, almost all notes are in Japanese, but you get the idea.
I’ll post the sketches from bento “Spirited Away bento” up to “Bento #22 Farm bento” today. I’ll post more sketches in the future.
Sorry for a loooong post. I got a new laptop, and I haven’t installed photoshop yet, so I can’t do side-by-side comparison. (Click on any pictures to see bigger pictures on my flickr account.)
Bento #12: Spirited Away!
Originally, Kaonashi was supposed to be in the bento, but BouNezumi and Haedori got a little too big and my boyfriend wanted four meat balls, so I decided not to make him in the last minute.
Bento #13: God Warrior vs Ohmu Stampede from Nausicaa!
I was going to put the little Ohmu (which Nausicaa rescued) in front of God Warrior, but I made other Ohmu a little bigger than I had planned, so I ended up not putting him in.
Bento #14: Katamari Damacy!
Sorry this sketch doesn’t look exactly as exciting as the bento… but the long list on the left side is the list of the ideas of food I had planned to make. (in Japanese) I didn’t make all of them though. Also I was going to make “Katamari meter” (it tells you how big your katamari is) on the left upper corner, but it didn’t fit. 😛
Bento #15: Super Smash Bros. Brawl!
The sketch is pretty much like the final bento. I added more stars in in the end because the background looked a little lonely.
Bento #16: Sleeping Totoro!
After I drew Totoro, I decided to place Totoro diagonally in the bento box. Also I was going to put 2-D Mei on his stomach, but since I Totoro was very 3-D, I didn’t think it’d fit well in this bento. (Besides, I don’t like putting human characters in my bento too much.)
Non-bento #2: Shadow of the Colossus Cheese Toast!
This is a copy of the actual sketch. I traced the original sketch before I used it to cut seaweed, so I’d have a backup even if I messed it up. Scanner? Printer? No, I traced it with a pencil. I’m old-school like that. 😉
Bento #17: Laputa Robot with Fox Squirrel!
I actually did more detailed sketch of Laputa Robot on a different page on my sketchbook, but haven’t scanned it yet.
Bento #18: Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service!
I was going to put a broom on the left side of Jiji, but I ran out of time. T_T
Bento #19: Professor Layton!
I had to make sure you could actually do the puzzle in this bento. Each food got a slightly bigger in the actual bento, but it was still very solvable!
Bento #20: Portal Companion Cube & Cake!
Notice that Turrets have slits in the drawing?
Bento #21: Bioshock Big Daddy & Little sister!
The alphabet letters are for each color/food. A = gray (rice and black sesame seed), B = redish brown (hamburg), C = orangish brown (fried potato), D = gray (konnyaku). I was going to make the drill with different food (konnyaku) at first, but I ended up using rice w/ black sesame seed because it looked pretty good.
And as you can see in the drawing, I really wanted to put the flying security bot…
Bento #22: Farm bento!
No big difference between the sketch and the final bento. I didn’t realize that I had written down the recipe for Soboro (ground beef cooked with soy sauce, sake and sugar) on the right bottom corner. 😛
For bigger pictures of my sketches, visit Bento Sketches! on my flickr page.
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
bento#22 Farm bento right side December 27, 2008
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog - original.Tags: animals, bento, charaben, kyaraben
3 comments
Whenever I make bento for my boyfriend, he’d show it to his friends at work and upload the pictures of bento on his flickr account and show it to other friends. One day, a friend of my boyfriend told him about a lunch box contest. I wasn’t that interested in the prizes, since they were a heavy duty lunch box and a rice cooker (I only use the same take-out plastic container, and I’m happy with my rice cooker), but I thought it’d be a nice challenge to make an original kyaraben.
Bento#22 : Farm bento Right Side
Created and eaten on: 11/09/2008
Since this bento spanned two bento boxes, I’ll do two posts about this bento. And today’s post is about the right side of the bento.
AnnaTheRed's bento factory 