Elmo snack bento

Years ago when I used to do decos (mail art, viewable at Swapsonian Gallery link to the right) I always favored the color themed decos. That particular fancy of mine has carried right over into bentomaking and so since the bentochallenge theme is Red I needed a good excuse for making another one. Kids make great excuses for bentos and as luck would have it, I've got two on hand.

I'd been brainstorming about this bento for a few days and Ms. Nexasaurus was kind enough to supply me with the wonderful idea of giving Elmo some balloons. This turned out great, so give yourself another great big hug Nexa! Here's the lil' guy:


His face is made of bell pepper, as are the balloons. I put the back side facing out for his face for texture and the shiny side out for the balloons for... shinyness. I did this with my Exacto knife I use for scrapping (washed and dried). That sucker may give me headaches cutting cardstock, but it's no slouch when cutting veggies! I cut up a mini Babybel for his eyes and punched out some dots for his eyeballs. I cut the mouth and balloon strings with a scissors and used a knife for his nose, which is carrot.

It's funny how things work out. His nose was a teeny bit too big and that meant part of it was the clearer carrot center. This really bothered me, but I decided carrot was a better looking orange than Kraft cheese. In the picture, the carrot center makes the nose look textured and lumpy, kinda like Elmo's nose! Anyway, here is the whole bento:


The other side contains raspberries, sliced watermelon, and a Japanese strawberry milk candy. I put in a food pick to add more red too. Before I did this I had seriously contemplated using plain toothpicks with little printed out flags with Dorothy (Elmo's goldfish pet) on them. A couple minutes into Googling Dorothy images I snapped out of my crazy spell and fished out a regular pick. "Fished out", haha!

Obviously this isn't much of a bento food-wise. After I placed Elmo I decided it was just too small for fitting enough red and meat too, so I decided a snack bento would be the best way to go. We're going to a softball game tomorrow, so it seems as if I'll have the opportunity to scare some family members.

Next week I'm going back to regular "nicely arranged" bentos. This is too much stress!