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Friday, August 2, 2013

Apple heads - guest post by Jeannine S.

OK, so after a trip to the local apple orchard, we ended up with four large bags of apples. Naturally we had to process them as quickly as possible. We made apple butter, fresh apple pies, apple dumplings, over 2 gallons of dried apples and a fresh apple coffee cake. Guess what? We still had quite a few apples left. So, being a mean and crotchety old lady, what better thing to do with some of them than dry them into apple heads. (The mean and crotchety part comes in because after they are dried, they have scowling faces and look like mean and crotchety old folks.)

We are going to make them into unusual Yule decorations, (witch heads, Santa heads, might even have a Grinch head.) Its very easy to dry apple heads. The apples need to be peeled and NOT cored. Push a wire through the top and out the bottom. The wires can be taken out later if you wish. To shape the face, use a teaspoon and roughly carve out eye indents, a nose and a mouth. If you have small beads or small “googly” eyes, you can push them into the apple at this point. Now comes the hard part, you have to let them dry. You can use the wire to hang them over head and out of the way. Ours have dried for about one month and are finally ready to finish. I dip the heads into clear polyurethane to seal them and then once again, let them dry. Now, you can add paint, hair, hats or any other items you think they can use. If you're really feeling froggy, make a cloth body and using the aforementioned wire, fasten it to the head and make a complete applehead doll. Then, you can let your creative juices flow and make clothing for the doll, etc.

The fun part is that you are never sure how they will turn out. You think they will look one way and the end result is totally different.

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