Ladybugs :)

So we finally went and saw Avatar yesterday in Imax :)  LOVED IT! :)

After the movie we went to dinner at Bonefish Grill - yum!  So by the time we got home and I finally got around to packing Rob's bento for today, my intention was to just pack a speed bento and be done with it, but then I chenged my mind and decided to do the ladybugs as originally planned :)

The ladybugs are nothing new, but still one of my favorite cute things to add to his bento.  The first time I did them, they took friggin' forever without a small hole punch.  I soon after made the purchase of the small hole punch and now they're not too time consuming :)

I always think the ladybugs have to have a little greenery to munch on :)

Flower kamaboko makes another appearance here - still loving it :)

I started by putting the clementine segments into the box, then added the foil cup and filled it with macaroni salad, added the hummus and topped it w/ sundried tomatoes, then added the chex mix.

I added the salad to the bottom tier and got an egg boiling while I made the ham, buffalo chicken and provolone pinwheels and cut the red pepper flowers. 

Then I decided to add the nori eating utensils :)

Once the egg was boiled, molded and cooled, I sliced it (Rob finds it easier to eat pre-sliced) and added it.  I decided on the black sesame seeds later as I was about to take pictures, remembering that it seems to help keep the egg from washing out in the photos.

I *still* haven't made that lightbox :o

Then I started on the ladybugs

As I was preparing to sit down and blog, I decided I wanted to do a quick tutorial for the ladybugs - so I made another one real quick and got some pictures of the process :)

Here are the tools I use:

First, I take a sheet of nori and punch out the dots and then the face w/ the pink nori punch you see in the picture.  I got the punch in this set: Nori Face Punches - I love the face punches and definitely recommend them if you're looking to do cute bento :)

Then I take my half grape tomato and dot it with honey using a toothpick:

Once the tomato is dotted w/ honey, I use my dedicated bento tweezers to place the nori spots onto it:

The next step is the 'face' - I use only the eyes from the face punch that I punched earlier:

Cut the eyelashes off each as shown:

Next, I get them wet to make them more pliable - otherwise they don't want to bend around the tomato, and then use the tweezers and my fingers to position them as shown:

The last step is to add the sesame seed eyes.  I put another dot of honey on each side of the face and carefully place a sesame seed on each side using the tweezers:

And that's it!  I decided I needed 2 more dots and added them after the eyes - and here's your finished product :)  Wasn't that pretty easy?

To give it the wing effect, you could also add a strip if nori down the center, but I never felt the need :)

I should have had a manicure before I did this! :P  lol

Happy Bento-ing!