Since I’ve been studying foraging, I’ve learned that the prettiest mushrooms are seldom the friendliest. While you might have seen pixies and faeries sheltering underneath spotty toadstools. In real life those markings – typical of fly argaric – serve as a warning to would be mushroom eaters.
Nevertheless they’re pretty aren’t they!? I took Dorothy on a mushroom hunt recently. We didn’t necessarily intend to pick anything, just look, but we didn’t find a single fungi! Disappointed we decided to make our own.
You will need
Egg shells
Red and white acrylic paint
Cotton thread
Paper doily
Small button
Large needle
Glue stick
Method
- When you crack your eggs, try to break the shell towards the top, narrow part. Rinse the shell and allow to dry
- Paint the shells with two layers of red acrylic
- Once completely dry, paint on some spots. Make them 8mm wide and just less than 2cm apart. Dry
- Lean on a chopping board and use the needle to poke a hole in the shell from the inside out
- Cut a small paper doily into quarters
- Roll each quarter into a cone shape and join the two edges with glue
- Crumple the doily up a little bit – fungi never looks perfect
- Thread the needle and push it through one of the holes of your button
- Go back to your doily cone and fold over the end to create a flat bit – technical term
- Push the needle through the ‘flat bit’
- Push the needle up through the egg shell to create your mushroom
Aren’t they sweet. We’ve decided to hang them on branches of corkscrew hazel as a Springtime / Easter / Eostre decoration.
Love Rachel 🍄
