Japan loves food. Not only does Japan love food, but it also has an unparalleled love for fake food, be it squishy keychains that look like loaves of bread or immaculately-designed plastic sushi featured in restaurant windows to entice in hungry passers-by. There’s something that’s always fascinated me by Japan’s obsession with creating so many different representations of food, but I’ve always been especially fond of the cute fake sweets often used in deco crafts.
Short for “decoration,” deco often refers to “decoden,” an over-the-top cute way of decorating cell phones and other electronics (usually portable game consoles), but from my understanding (which could very well be wrong), deco can really be used to described any sort of cute creation that is used to “decorate,” whether it be a person (i.e nail art) or a piece of electronic equipment, bag, etc.
Anyway, enough musing on terminology! The moral of the story is, I’ve been enamored by cute fake foods for quite some time, and have always wanted to try a deco craft kit and make some myself. Imagine my surprise when I was casually browsing in a toy store and found a Japanese deco craft kit being marketed at young girls!
Apparently Whipple has been selling a number of different deco kits internationally for a while now, but I haven’t ever been tuned into the deco “scene” as it were, so that news completely passed me by. After giving the kit go, I honestly have to say that I don’t think a 10-year-old me would have been able to manage it (25-year-old me barely did!).
While there were a number of kits available, I ultimately went with the Crème Filled Creations pack as it had the most variety in terms of sweets, and I liked the look of the macarons especially.
Here’s what the kit itself looks like – the box was rather large for the amount of things packed in! There are instructions for how to apply the cream in different patterns, as well as a practice sheet, which was great for a beginner like myself. In the future, though, I might buy a second bag of the cream, as the bag supplied with the kit is actually quite small. The instructions warn you to only do a couple rounds on the practice sheet so as not to run out, but even after doing only one practice round I found myself wishing I had a little extra cream at the end. Those who are worried that they might not get the hang of the technique right away would definitely want that extra leeway, plus the cream can come out a little runny at first, meaning you may waste some before you can get started (I just used the runny cream for my practice sheet; the consistency was fine by the time I got to application).