Sunday, October 21, 2007

Apples: Apple Doll craft

As I mentioned recently, we've been doing a bit of an apple unit. One of the books we found, Elisa Kleven's The Apple Doll, is a wonderful story about a little girl and her apple doll. At the end of the book are some easy-to-follow directions for making your very own apple dolls.

Today, since it was snowing when we got back from Mass, String Bean and I worked on making our very own dolls. In this dry, Front Range climate, they should dry fairly fast ....
First, get out your supplies: good, large & unblemished apples, sharp knife (or kids can use a ball point pen/plastic fork or knife), bowl, lemon juice, directions (in the book).Peel the apple so that all peel is removed -- probably best for an adult to do this step as you need a SHARP knife.
Carve the face -- start with the nose, cutting away the sides so the nose is above the rest of the face. Make holes for eyes and cut in the mouth, chin, cheeks, etc. The one on the right was "cut" using the back end of a plastic fork -- the definition seems better than the one on the left where a sharp knife was used!
Place the apples in a deep enough bowl so that the apples can be covered with lemon juice (to which 1-2 tbls of salt has been added). For our two apples, I used a whole bottle of lemon juice. Let the apples soak, submerged for at least 5 minutes.
Place the apples on a rack (or hang from string) to dry completely. The apples should shrivel up and look like old, weathered faces.

Once the apples are completely dried (dry and spongy), you can use chenille stems for arms and legs (twisting extra chenille stems to give it a strong body) or you can use sticks with bits of dried apple attached for hands and feet. Dress your doll and you are all set -- these dolls will last a long time, but do check them occasionally if you've had a more than usual humid day.

4 comments:

Mary Machado said...

These look really neat - can't wait to see a picture when they are dried.

Carmen said...

Hi Mary, These are cute. I made apple dolls when I was in third grade or so. It turned out really cute I remember, but my mom thought that my doll would attract mice. I couldn't believe that was the first thing she thought of in reaction to my cute craft. Anyway, your apples dolls just reminded me of mine. Have fun, Carmen

MacBeth Derham said...

Mary, those are the best apple faces I have ever seen! I can't wait to see the final product!

Cay Gibson said...

Mary,
We've made these apple faces in the past but I wasn't aware of the book "The Apple Doll" until last week as I was surfing Amazon for another book. It looked like a darling book for my girls and I was excited to see you recommending it. :)