Decoden Madness!

OK, so there's this Japanese craft/art called Decoden that I've totally fallen in love with.  Basically, you have all the fun of super-fancy cake decoration, but it LASTS FOREVER!!!! O_O

I've decorated my share of fancy cakes over the years, let me tell you, and it's always a bit disheartening that the things take way less time to eat than they do to create.  With Decoden, you get to do fancy piping (many creatrixes, including myself, use silicone caulk - yep you heard me right!) and then stud it with sweet little cabochons and fancy jewels, sprinkle on some glitter or glass microbeads, and voilà!  To make it even more fun, you can create your own cabochons out of polymer or air-dry clays.  (OMG, Delight paper clay is so aptly named!)  I make it sound easy, and once you get the hang of it, it's not hard, but it can be time-consuming.  Fortunately, it's also really fun!  Oh, and don't even get me started on the joys of "baking" the cookie pieces with chalk pastels.  It's really exciting to see them come to life! :)

Decoden is often used to decorate storage boxes or jars, pencil cases, and cell phone covers.  I've also used the techniques I've learned to make tiny cupcake and pie pendants and magnets.  Fun!

And maybe the best part of all is that Decoden treats are sugar- and calorie-free. ^_^

So here's a tiny sampling of some of the things I've made.  They're already in my shop, and I'll be adding more as soon as I can take pics! :)

Facio Ergo Sum

As the world keeps moving faster, it seems we've progressed from books to newspapers and magazines, then to blogs, to Facebook, to Twitter and Vines.  Next we'll probably be at 2-second vids.  Short and sweet is the theme of the year month day hour minute.  Even the planet itself is becoming impatient, with earthquakes in Chile and Japan (among others) shortening the length of Earth's days.

More quickly than I can believe, my kids are growing up.  Mollusc is off to one of the nation's top design schools next year. (Nationally in the top 3, #1 in the Midwest.)  Her first 2 years of college have yielded straight 4.0s (Yay homeschooling!  And OK, it doesn't hurt that she's brilliant and a hard worker.)  and she'll transfer to this much more expensive school with the bulk of her liberal arts courses already completed and a nice scholarship to boot.  Sluggie is at this moment in San Antonio at Nerd Nation as an officer with the Phi Theta Kappa honor society, (of which Mollusc is also a member.)  Fishy is off to Middle College next year, too, which will leave only the Prawn at home with me.  And so, with fewer kids to teach, I've been creating more and getting back to writing as well. My age-old fear of failure has me still re-writing the book I've been writing for years, but I'm going to pull the trigger, finally, as I have other books cooking that want to come out. My self-imposed deadline for submission is June.  In the meantime, I procrastinate whenever possible by doing this: