How to Make Dried Apple Heads for Halloween

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Apple heads. They aren't just for 1972 Christmases anymore. They're traditionally air dried for weeks, but we're going to stick them in the oven and have them done by tonight.

Shrunken applehead Frankenstein doll for Halloween.

Upon reflection I can see that these are horrible photos. For one thing, Frankenstein is linty. Not that Frankenstein is known to be particularly fastidious, but still.

Shrunken apple head dolls with an antique porcelain doll on a stand with flowers nearby.

I intended to make apple dolls for Christmas last year but I ended up making a deal with myself to keep putting it off until it was too late to do it instead.

Therefore, I have for you today a quick tutorial on how to make shrunken apple heads for Halloween. We might circle back at Christmas.

Table of Contents

Materials

Large, hard apple & a paring knife.
Bowl
Lemon juice
Salt
Pumpkin carving kit might come in handy as well.
Dehydrator or oven to dry the apple in.

That's my favourite apple peeler from Kuhn Rikon and my pumpkin carving tools.

I really only ended up using the apple peeler and a paring knife.

Instructions

Peel the apple.
Fill a mixing bowl with water and add about ¼ cup of lemon juice and ¼ cup salt.
Drop the apple in the bowl and let soak for at least 15 minutes.
Remove the apple from the bowl, wipe it dry with a paper towel and start carving.
Carve your head.
Soak apple in solution again.
Pat dry with a paper towel and dehydrate in the oven at the lowest temperature until the head is dry to touch. If you have a dehydrator, I dried these at 135 for about 12 hours.

2 apple head dolls in front of an antique porcelain doll.

Use the largest apple you can because these things shrink a lot.

TIP 1

The first time around I was treating it like a fine piece of art. It's not.

Drawn face on an apple for an apple head doll.

The first way I did it is wrong for 2 reasons:

I was carving it as a "relief" not using the entire apple to form a head.
The details were so small that when it fully dried/shrunk it didn't look like anything.

Would you like to save this stuff?

We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.

It looked promising when I first carved it, but after drying it just for a few hours I could tell it wasn't right.

TOP TIP

Carving the eye sockets on an apple head.

Full skull of Dracula carved into apple for an apple head.

You can carve details, they just have to be large and chunky. Like the spine in the neck. I found this Youtube tutorial after I did my own heads. It gives you a really good understanding of what to leave and what to take out when you're carving the face.

Apple carved into the shape of a head for dried apple head.

Dried apple head after 12 hours in dehydrator.

You can also do these heads much more basic and they still turn out impressively.

Frankenstein

Cut the apple into a squarish head shape. Make a deep brow, carve a scar into the forehead and once the apple head is dry, add cloves for eyes, and bolts to the side of his head.

Carved apple head soaking in a green bowl filled with lemon juice, salt and water.

I soaked the apples in the lemon & salt solution right after peeling the apple, and after carving it so nothing would brown.

Frankenstein apple head beginning to dry in a dehydrator.

Frankenstein apple head just after drying on a wood cutting board.

As it happens, I ran out of room on the apple for Frankenstein's mouth, and it still looks good.

To finish it (within about 1 minute) stick a bamboo skewer into the head. I cut the basic outline of a suit from a scrap piece of black fabric and attached it to the skewer with an elastic band.

Apple head doll outfit of black cloth beside apple head and scissors.

To stand them up just stick the skewer into anything that will hold it. For mine, I stuck the skewers into small necked glass bottles which get hidden behind the apple head clothing.

Happy Halloween to you, the kids who come around and the fruit flies that will appear, find, and swarm your apple head within 15 minutes. Just so you know.

It's actually really appropriate that fruit flies should swarm the apple heads because it's quite horrific. Very in keeping with our theme of yuck.

The fruit flies will disappear once the leather of the apple head face is completely dry.