Baby favor: Apple Witches

 

 Baby favor: Apple Witches

Yesterday the kiddos were home from school for parent-teachers conferences.  As I was searching for fun Fall crafts we could do to make the day more interesting, I remembered something  I made way back when I was in in 2nd or 3rd grade:  Shriveled witches heads.
  I know it sounds a little gruesome, but the finished project was so cool that I kept it in my “important memories” box for a couple of decades until I purged all unnecessary  memorabilia to move cross country and marry my sweetheart.  I wish now that I’d kept it.  And several other things I tossed during that move…

I pulled some of the oldest and softest apples from my produce drawer in the fridge and let the kids peel them.

Then, following explicit directions from each child, I carved a face on the side of the apple.  This part of the craft should be adult only, since it required slicing and carving with a knife.  I found my small, sharp paring knife worked best.

This “face” will shrivel to look like an old witch or hag, so as I was carving, I tried to make the features large and bold.  Aw, who am I kidding?  With my pathetic carving skills, ALL features look large and bold.  It’s all I’m able to do.  But my point is:  The more defined the feature now, the better and more realistic this will look at the end.  I tried to accentuate the cheekbones, carved out the nose to make it look larger, and made sure the eyes and mouth were cut deeply into the center of the apple.

Here are our “finished” versions.  So far.  I didn’t think to take a picture yesterday when the apples were still fresh, but in this shot you can see that overnight there has already been some shriveling.

Now all I have to do is let them turn all dry and brown as they “age” on my window sill.  When they’re hag-like enough, I’ll post Part 2 showing how to turn them into cute witches.

If you’re interested in making these for Halloween, I’d recommend starting about now to give the apples plenty of time to “age.”

Happy Halloween

source: showtellshare.blogspot.com