after a super long break, i am back to packing ‘cute’ food for my daughter.
i have been experimenting new food to replace nori facial details. i find nori punching to picking and placing tiny ‘eyes’ and ‘mouth’ on food a little stressful especially in a mad morning rush. it is more so when the tiny ‘eyes ‘ just wont stick to the place where it should be. 
i found this black decorating gel tube very handy for dotting eyes and drawing mouth especially for such days, like today. made sausage and cheese sammies for k. added a piece of choco cake for her since she will go to school early for her guzheng lesson.
i tried ‘drawing’ with nutella too, but the lines werent smooth and appeared patchy. kindly leave a comment if you have found another way to draw the facial details apart from punched nori. 
Filed under: Bento (Charaben) Tagged: | bear, bento, cake, charaben, cheese, kids snacks, sandwich, sausage
Welcome back to bento world, Karen. Missed your bento so much and happy to see this cute bento. I still prefer to use nori then this type of gel/icing.
other than nori, we can use egg sheet, but more works to do. I found some black rice crispy which very handy to use as eyes for the bento characters.
hi emily, thank you for your encouragement.
ok, must go hunt for that black rice crispy liao. anything for speed.
Hi Anna! So glad to see you back in bento-ing again!
You so right about using nori for those small little feature details and if you don’t paste well, they’ll curled up/shrinked/wrinkled after awhile. This is why I’m so lazy to use nori now. I’ve tried using the edible colored pens for the details but my girls were too afraid to eat and would tear off them. I used once only since they don’t like it. Yesterday I tried using those ‘movable eyes’ made of plastic for (art and crafts) that I got from stationary shop. They love it! It’s cute tho, frankly! lol
I washed and reuse those movable eyes but some may open up. Btw, what brand of gel tube did u use?
PS: The movable eyes made of plastic are with white opaque flat bases and transparent rounded tops filled with black round pupils. Hope you understand what I’m trying to explain…
hi lyn, thank you for fillling in. it’s nice to be back and get connected to the bento community again!
that’s a very good idea. well, as long as the kids are old enough to know that the eyes cannot be eaten.
candy eyes are a good option too but we cant get them in singapore.
i didnt like the edible coloured pens, cos it’s hard to draw and the lines ‘spread/smear’ when in contact with bread.
oh i used wilton gel. i bought mine from phoon huat $3.90 i think.
thanks for sharing.
I haven’t tried this yet, but I was going to this week – how about cutting the face parts from fruit leather?