Garlic
Supplies:
- White grocery bags
- Cotton stuffing
- Cream yarn
- Twine
- Paints: white, yellow, green, purple, cream
- Glue
- Scissors
Step 1: Create the base
You’ll start by cutting a flat rectangle piece of a plastic shopping bag; preferably one that is white with no logos. Once you have a nice piece to work with, grab a fist size amount of polyfill and put it onto the center of the bag, then bunch the bag around it so that you have a pocket of the polyfill inside. You’ll want this to be nice and tight so squeeze it down in there really well and then twist the top so you trap the polyfill inside.
Then, tie some cream yarn around the top to secure this. Don’t cut the end because you are going to continue wrapping the same piece of yarn around the rest of the garlic. Now, wrap the yarn around the base several times until it’s nice and tight, and then start wrapping it across and creating pie-like sections in the garlic. Each time you wrap the yarn, split the previous section Continue this until you have about eight sections or until you feel as though it’s nice and garlicky looking. When you’ve put it across the last section, wrap the yarn around the base so that nothing comes undone, and then tie it off and cut the end of the string. Make any adjustments that you need to make to the placement of the strings.
Step 2: Paint the base
Now, it’s time to add paint and this is where you really need to trust the process. Start with a mixture of lime green and purple to make a greenish-brown color. Water it down a bit and then paint it onto the bottom where the strings meet and fan it out towards the top.
Next, blend some watered-down purple against the edge of the green color and into the white.
Water down a bit of a cream color and start blending the purple into the white. This is going to make the transition from purple to white a bit less start and add a crepey texture as it dries.
Follow the same steps you did on the bottom of the garlic to the top.
Alternatively, mix together some white and cream paint with some water and then coat the entire surface of the garlic with that.
I like to do a few of both colors to create more variation in my finished bunch.
Step 3: Add the finishing touches
Once the paint has dried, twist the top of the bag and cut it off about a centimeter above where the yarn is wrapped. Then, to keep that from fraying, add some tacky glue and then smooth it around the top.
The final step is to add the roots. To make these, cut up some twine into small pieces and unravel it so you’re left with small stringy bits. Add a generous dollop of glue to the center of the bottom of the garlic and then place the pieces of twine into the glue.
Adjust until you have a neat patch that resembles the roots on a head of garlic.