natural toadstool garland
Curious Fact: Mushrooms are more closely related to animals than plants!
Have a go at making this fun and easy toadstool garland out of things you can find around the house!
This activity is great for the whole family and will leave your house smelling of autumn, read on to find out how…
Oven time: 1 hour
Making time: 30 minutes
Supplies:
cinnamon sticks
oranges
wire
string
red and white paint
Method:
Start by cutting the top halves off your oranges. This will be used for the top of your mushroom.
After you have cut your oranges , pad them dry with a paper towel then remove the insides and place the peel in the oven for 1 hour at 90 degrees Celsius to dry them out.
Once out the oven, wait for the peels to cool and them paint them red. We used an acrylic paint marker however standard red paint will work as well.
Set aside the peels to dry and grab your cinnamon sticks. Take a piece of wire and thread it through the middle of the cinnamon stick with about 4 inches of wire on either side. Bring one side of wire up to the other and wrap around to secure the cinnamon stick.
Once you have your secured cinnamon sticks, take the remaining wire and pierce through the middle of the orange peel and fold it creating a loop.
After connecting the cinnamon sticks to the orange peels you can add the toadstool details with white paint.
Once you have added the details on you can tie them on some string and hang them up wherever you want a more autumnal vibe!
Here is the finished outcome for this natural toadstool garland which will add that extra touch of curiousity to your autumn! If you want to find your creative spark you can choose different colours for each toadstool or add some curious designs to each one.
For millennia, scientists found fungi a complete enigma. Mushrooms grew out of the ground like plants but, unlike them, were unable to make their own food via the sun. They couldn’t be animals either because they didn’t move. Fungi were squeezed into a corner of the plant kingdom and only awarded their on independent lineage in 1968.
STILL CURIOUS?
Fungi Library:
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures - Merlin Sheldrake
Fungarium - The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
The Magic of Mushrooms: Fungi in folklore, superstition, and herbal medicine - The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
Mushroom Miscellany - Patrick Harding
By Rose Bailey
