Ingredients
- Materials:
- Twine or thin ribbon (make sure the string is not so thin that it
- tangles or breaks easily)
- Needle with a large eyelet
- Small round Styrofoam balls
- Glue gun and glue sticks
- Dehydrated fruits, fruit peelings, herbs, and flowers of your choice
- Can of fast-dry clear acrylic spray paint (high or low gloss)
Instructions
- Choose your pieces for shape rather than flavour, and use the ones you would not eat: curled peel, flowers that browned at the edge, slices that came out translucent. This is where a failed tray earns its keep.
- Thread the needle through the foam ball first, leaving a loop about 7.5 cm across, then knot it hard against the ball and trim the tail. Doing this now means never pushing a needle through finished work.
- Hang the bare ball from the loop and let it take its own weight. A thin ribbon that holds a foam ball may not hold the same ball once it is covered, and this is the moment to find out.
- Work downwards from the loop with the glue gun, overlapping each piece slightly as you go. Gaps are visible at every stage, and once half the ball is covered there is no reaching back in.
- Cover the foam completely, including the underside. A patch of white showing at the base is the single thing that makes these read as a craft project rather than an object.
- Hang the ball up and give it several light coats of acrylic instead of one heavy one. A heavy coat runs, and a run dries as a shiny streak straight down the fruit.
- Leave it hanging for a full day before it is handled or boxed. The acrylic is what keeps humidity and insects out of the fruit, and it is not doing that until it is hard.
- Box them with tissue somewhere dry between seasons and they last for years. They stop being food the moment they are sprayed, so store them well away from anything you intend to eat.
