Mud Pies and Froggy Tales: Making Apple Dolls & Author Elisa Kleven

Perusing the library one day we found a lovely book, The Apple Doll by Elisa Kleven. The story is about a young girl who finds a beautiful apple on her favorite apple tree and pretends that the apple is her doll. When the girl's sister informs her that her doll is not looking too fresh anymore, she asks her mom if she can dry the apple. This idea reminds the girl's mother that her grandma used to make her a dried apple doll when she was small. She then learns how to make her beautiful apple into a longer lasting doll, with the instructions included at the end of the book. The story is wonderful and I love the illustrations! Visit Elisa's website http://www.elisakleven.com/

Here is the book:

I decided that this would be a fun fall craft to do with my girls. So we picked out a couple of big, round granny smith apples at the local grocery story, peeled and carved them, and let them soak in lemon juice and salt water for 30 minutes. After that we placed them on a cookie tray and cooked them on "keep warm" - Bake in the oven for several days, turning off the heat at night. It was a quick and easy way to dehydrate them.

apples, pre-dehydrating

Using pipe cleaners I made bodies for the apple heads and we pulled out some little doll clothes to dress them in. To attach the pipe cleaner to the apple, make a hole through the center of the apple (I used a chop stick) and push the pipe cleaner through the hole. On the second doll I made I used an old wooden knitting needle to make the body of the doll, which gave it more support than the pipe cleaners. I then hot glued the pipe cleaners to the needle.

Stella even liked the taste of the apple doll's nose. I used a hot glue gun to glue to doll's hair (made from wool) to its head. You can then insert beads in the eye sockets (which we have to do still) and lightly color the dolls cheeks with a pink pen.

Here is the doll from the book, The Apple Doll: