Animal Donut Charms

These animal donuts have been a huge sensation on the Internet. I first came across them at Ueno station in Japan but I've seen them around many small bakeries across Tokyo. So here's my first attempt at making animal donuts using paper clay and trying out a new icing technique using PVA glue. They turned out quite okay looking for a first try, but obviously practise makes perfect.

To make the icing I combined PVA glue with some water colour paints to make the glue opaque when it dried. I simply dipped the paper clay into the glue and that was it (wanring: extremely messy process!)! When the glue dried it formed a thin layer on top of the paper clay giving it the appearance of icing. It wasn't perfect I admit, and I would have preferred it if the glue was a lot thicker in appearance when it dried. I really want to try buying a hot glue gun and seeing if it gives a better effect. If I do, you'll definitely see a post about it.

Here we have 6 animal donuts: panda, chicken, pig, cow, rabbit and a cat. I feel like the panda donut doesn't quite fit in because it has a different style of eyes compared to the other animals..But I'm sure next time I'll try to make them more similar to each other.

(Here's a cow!)

(And a panda)

(And a cat ^_^)

(Chicken)

 (The pig looked a little bit plain so I added some fake whipped cream)

(Same with the bunny rabbit!)

(The under side was coloured with brown paint to make it look more like a donut. However some of the glue icing got stuck to the bottom so it looks quite messy ><)

So there you have it! Sorry if the pictures are a little bit crap, I've never had awesome photography skills ^_^"

More about Paper clay

I've decided that today I will be continuing on with the list of materials required to making clay creations so that you do get a good grasp as to what you will need. So this blog post will be all about Paper clay!

In my previous post, I had a mini comparison session between Paper clay and Polymer clay. Because I use Paper clay the most when making clay charms, I thought it would be interesting to show you what type of Paper clay I use and maybe do like a mini review of each brand. 

If you're living in Japan then Paper clay is super affordable and easy to get your hands on. But since moving to Australia I've found that paper clay is really, really difficult to find. Luckily as I have mentioned, there is now a DAISO here and it's now quite easy to buy Paper clay otherwise I would stock up on Paper clay each time I went back to Japan.

So let's take a look at the types of clay that I use. Here are 4 types of Paper clay that I use most frequently. 3 of them have been bought from DAISO and the last one is from Japan. All of them are air-dry clays so there's no baking required. Just a lot of waiting...

The first clay we'll be looking at is Paper clay bought from DAISO. I bought this from the DAISO in Australia so it cost me $2.80 for the 500g packet. This clay resembles mud in the sense that it's really moist to begin with and has a very dense texture. The colour is not pure white and so the clay will have a grey-ish tint when you add coloured paints to it. I don't find the grey tint a problem because usually I'm adding a layer of paint on top of the clay and so it doesn't have a huge impact on my creations. It becomes a bit difficult if you're using some sort of mould to shape your clay because it's so moist, it just smears when removing it from the mould.

This is wood clay also bought from DAISO. This clay is super light in weight and has more of a paper texture. In other words it has a paper-mache/damp tissue feeling. The clay comes in a brown colour that stays prominent even after adding coloured paints to it. Like the clay above, it shouldn't be a big issue if you're going to be adding a layer of paint on top of the clay. I like to use this clay when making brown clay creations because it saves me the time of having to colour white clay. It dries super fast as well and you can remoisten your clay by adding water.

And here's your standard paper clay from DAISO once again. This paper clay comes in a variety of colours: black, blue, yellow, red etc. I like to buy the white clay and make my own colours by adding paint. Alternatively you can buy the pre-coloured clay and mix them together to form the colours of your choice. This paper clay is super light weight, and dries pretty fast. You can use different moulds to shape this clay, it's pretty easy to use but I do find that it sticks to surfaces quite easily. If it gets a bit dry, simply add water and your clay is good to go again!

The last one is part of the Tamiya Decoration Series. So the Tamiya Decorations Series brand in Japan has a range of materials and tools that allow you create your very own clay sweets. This cost me about 400yen and is very similar to the white paper clay bought at DAISO. I think the only difference is probably the quality of the clay. On feel, you can tell that the Tamiya Decorations clay is of higher quality. It's super soft, retains its moisture for longer and doesn't stick to surfaces or moulds as easily as the previous clay. I think the best thing about this clay is that it is really easy to create the texture of cookies, breads, ice cream etc. 

So there you have a little insight into the clays that I use. There are heaps and heaps of brands of air-dry clay out there. I know people use COSMOS, Kutsuwa Fuwafuwa, Premier etc that are much higher in quality. I'm happy to just settle with DAISO clay because it's just too troublesome to order other brands online. Plus the online prices are way more expensive than the retail price in Japan.

Be aware that these are all air-dry clays and so leaving them out will dry them up. You can remoisten paper clay but if it gets to the point that it is completely dry, it just becomes really difficult. I recommend double bagging your clay in a snap-lock bag and keeping it in a cool storage area. :)