Centerpieces - Den Den Mushi Ben & Doe

Today we went to go paint some snails!

That sounds weird so I'll explain. I recently got an email from If An Elephant Can Paint showcasing some new items that came in. One of them was this snail and I thought it would be perfect for a Den Den Mushi centerpiece for our wedding.

For those of you who don't know (and I imagine that's a lot)... den den mushi are snails used for communication in the anime One Piece. Each snail looks like the person that is speaking through the den den. (see below for examples)

They ended up being a decently large size which was perfect since I wanted two of them to make a centerpiece. Ben and I picked up two and we started painting. Ben chose to paint the snail shell red since that's his favorite color. I chose to use an overcoat that would kind of make it looks like cherry blossoms, which is my favorite.












The nice part is that you can place a votive candle inside the snail. That'll light them up nicely once it gets dark at the reception.

This is what they look like unfired. Lol. Before they are fired up, the glaze gets really light so it's hard to tell that my snail is even painted. It would have been nice to have them smiling but the shape of this snail makes them look like they're frowning anyway so we decided to just go with it.






To complete Ben's snail, I bought a doll-sized cowboy hat and cut it into a baseball cap. Unfortunately it came in a set of 4 but I figured I can either use them for other centerpieces or I will get 4 attempts at a passable hat.








I attempted to paint the Adidas logo on it since that is Ben's signature look. The first attempt (right) was with a regular white out stick. The slightly furry surface soaked up the paint more than I wanted to and I had very little control.

The second attempt (left) had some more experimenting to it. First I tried to scrape the surface with an x-acto knife to get some of that furry stuff off. Then I taped it and tried to pull off any loose fibers. Then I just dabbed on a little white-out liquid, then spreading it out with a x-acto knife. That gave me more control and got more defined lines in there. This particular white-out liquid is made of fibers though so sometimes I had trouble spreading it.

To complete my snail, I bought some small black yarn for hair. It was 0.40 each but I didn't want a big ball of yarn for $5-6 when I was only going to use a little. I also got some frilly white fabric that I will make into a "veil" for my snail. Tip: Look around the Clearance Fabric section. Sometimes when they have excess/leftover fabric, they will package it up in a bundle and put it for sale. I got my veil fabric for just $0.60!

My snail next to a plate showing the special glaze crystals

I just picked up our snails and this is what it looks like, all fired up to go! I'm a little sad that I don't have enough crystals on my snail... it was supposed to look like sakura petals. Oh well... Everything else came out well.








 
I also photoshopped some screenshots of denden and printed them.


















 
And here is the finished pieces!

From our awesome photographer: Chris Kim Photo

From our awesome photographer: Chris Kim Photo