It looks like a delightful basket of robin’s eggs splendidly dyed and glittered. Within moments, everything goes weird as a woman’s hands twist, pull, mush and crush it all into a formless goo.
The hands belong to Amelia Tang, who was looking for crafty activities to keep her children occupied during school vacation back in 2019 when the slime trend was at its peak.
“There was one year-end holiday where I was trying to find things for my kids to do and I came across slime so I decided to make it at home and it has never left, the slime just came [and] kept growing at home,” 37-year-old Tang, who became obsessed and began posting her creations-destructions as Quaint Candy, told Coconuts in an interview.
Yes, slime. The video producer molds clay, glitter, and glue to look like desserts and then crushes them in oddly satisfying ASMR glory in front of the camera.
Since Tang began sliming, she’s gone from novice slime-crafter to in-demand international supplier.
Some of her surreal creations include slime that looks like kueh bangkit sago biscuits, love letter biscuits, and even the colored ice kacang shaved ice.
It all started when Tang chanced upon a slime video on the internet that featured a compilation of slimes with all sorts of toppings referred to as charms. She said watching the slimes be manipulated and crushed could trigger her senses, and it soon became her creative outlet.
They were also “quite easy” to make from scratch, she said.
“There was one of those crunchy slime compilation videos that was visually attractive and I was like, ‘You know what? That sounds like something fun that me and the kids can do.’ So we just started. And it was just a nice, very simple, easily accessible medium for me to try and get a little bit creative,” she said.
Two years later, Tang’s home business has sold over 5,000 slime creations to mostly young adults and moms like herself in Singapore as well as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, and Taiwan.
Tang’s slime empire is held together by herself, sometimes with the help of her husband, who helps her maintain the store’s website and, perhaps, keep their children entertained.
“It’s me, myself, and I have some helpers that do come and help me. Sometimes my husband helps as well though he doesn’t really touch the slime,” she said.
Tang treats her mini factory space at home like a science lab, experimenting with formulas by tweaking amounts of glue to get different textures to the slime. At least once a month, she releases a batch of themed designs.
Her latest collection launched two weeks ago has 15 designs with Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year themes. The hot sellers were the love letter biscuit and kueh bangkit slimes, which she also used clay and antique molds to make them.
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‘Multisensory’ experience
Tang is known for her slime sets topped with handmade clay designs. These “DIY sets” give customers the satisfaction of crushing and mixing the clay with the slime.
“[I]t’s multisensory, especially for DIY, you can either play with the base itself or you can assemble it and mix in the clay to create a different kind of a slime. So, that is the lure for it,” she said.
She has molded clay to look like the steamed rice flour dessert kueh tutu, cookies, flowers, and even cucumbers for a gin and tonic slime. But the one that glued most to her was the sour tart slime she recreated from bakery Cupplets, calling them the best lemon tarts in Singapore. The crust and meringue are made out of clay that’s torched and dusted with rose petals on top.
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Most of the slimes have four out of five of the sensory appeals — sight, touch, smell from fragrance oils, and sound from the mixing of slime and charms. Taste is not incorporated at the moment, added Tang.
She most enjoys designs that showcase the “Singapore identity” creatively for the trend that is more Western-influenced and is inspired by Singapore’s uniqueness of having things that are only available in the country and her own personal accounts of nostalgia.
“[T]hose are the ones that I do enjoy doing a lot more because I feel that the slime trend has sort of originated from Western countries. So a lot of times it is fun to play with but more so when your own cultural identity has been injected into it,” she said.
Endless slime
Tang’s 4-year-old daughter is currently in slime heaven with the endless supply of slime at home but not so much her 6-year-old son, who is not into playing with textures and has moved on to telling stories through drawings.
“It’s very interesting because they both play with it very differently, my boy likes to play with it like they Play-Doh, which is nothing wrong with it but my girl like really likes the whole feeling of the textures and actually observing how I play with it and copying me, getting the sound and the ASMR out of it,” she said.
Fortunately, she spreads the joy of slime out of her home and also holds slime parties for kids where they can make and decorate their own tubs of slime. Before pandemic times, she once made slime that looked like mud for her friend’s son, who was into the military, and had soldier figurines to go with it.
“I helped a friend do a slime party which is where I bring all my slime and I order all the add-ins. And usually, it’ll be about 10 kids and then I’ll teach them how to make slime and then I’ll get them to decorate everything from there and they get to keep it for themselves, like a mini workshop,” she said.
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