Children love to create interesting and simple things with their own hands. In addition, joint creativity will be an excellent leisure time for kids and parents. As an ornamental material, not only cones, paper or polymer clay are suitable - simple and funny toys can be created from vegetables: pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchini or eggplants.
Eggplant Crafts: Useful Tips
Autumn is the best time for vegetable crafts. Zucchini and melons turn into boats and houses, cucumbers turn into dogs or men. Eggplants are also suitable for making toys with your own hands. They have firm pulp and glossy, not too dense skin. For work, you do not have to use dangerous chisels or drills, it is convenient to cut vegetables with an ordinary kitchen knife. You cannot trust the smallest knife - all cutting work must be performed by parents, and the child will have the most interesting thing - to assemble a figurine from pre-prepared parts.
It's better to start with the simplest crafts. Eggplants make funny animals, birds and little men, which will become characters of a home play, a decoration for a nursery or a decor for a dinner table. These toys have only one drawback - fragility. After a few days, the vegetables will fade and wilt, so you have to worry about replacing them in advance.
Penguins, swans and zebras: what you can do yourself
The most popular and simple eggplant craft is funny penguins. To create them, you need not too large fruits of a rounded-elongated shape with a shiny dark purple rind, perfectly imitating the smooth plumage of a bird. To make the craft as reliable as possible, you should find a photo of a penguin in a magazine or on the Internet and use it as a sample.
With a sharp vegetable knife, part of the peel is cut off, imitating a light abdomen. The oval-shaped cut goes from top to bottom, the top of the eggplant with the tail should remain intact. On the sides of the figure, cuts are made to represent the wings. For greater reliability, they can be bent a little.
To make the penguin stable, the lower part of the eggplant is cut off. You can cut the legs out of it, and then attach them using the pointed tips of toothpicks. It remains to attach eyes from peppercorns or small black berries to the head. The penguin is ready. In this way, you can make a whole flock by choosing different sizes of eggplants.
A more complex craft is a zebra. To create it, you need 2 small eggplants. You can make a body from an elongated one, a more rounded one will play the role of a head. It is recommended to make a preliminary sketch, outlining the location of the stripes.
In the eggplant, which will become the head, a small hole is cut out to fit the top of the second vegetable. The lower part of the eggplant body is cut off. Then comes the most important work - cutting off the peel in the form of zebra stripes. Better to make them rounded, slightly wavy or rounded. The role of the eyes will be performed by small black olives; ears are made from the halves of the same olives. Small parts need to be attached to the head and body with toothpicks.
You can carve a beautiful swan from an eggplant. One half of the vegetable will become the body, the other will be useful for the neck. The plumage mimics small cuts with a sharp knife, the beak can be made from the tip of a hot chili pepper. Experienced craftsmen make other handicrafts from vegetables: poodles, whales, kittens, mice. With proper skill, you can try to cut nesting dolls, vases and other toys that will surely interest your baby. Ideas will be prompted by imagination, basic models are easy to find in needlework magazines and on specialized sites.
