DIY vegetable crafts: original ideas, master class

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

Autumn is a wonderful time of the year when nature gives people a rich harvest of vegetables, fruits, berries. This material is not only for culinary delights, but also for the embodiment of creative ideas. Indeed, from the gifts of nature, you can create real handmade masterpieces. Crafts from vegetables can be exhibited at the autumn fair to lure buyers. And advertising, as everyone knows, is the engine of trade.

Children also love to create with products. Schools often hold competitions for the best DIY vegetable crafts. The work is done by both junior and senior students. Of course, the work of children of different ages will differ significantly in the complexity of the compositions, but both can be interesting to the viewer and original.

In our article, we will consider several interesting vegetable crafts, both simple and complex works will be presented. We will tell mothers who cannot teach their child to eat vegetables how to lure the baby with their spectacular arrangement on a plate. We will also help hostesses learn howserve vegetables on the festive table in an original way so that they become the decoration of the entire feast.

What is carving?

The art of artistic carving of vegetables and various fruits originated in Asian countries many centuries ago. Now carving is taught to children from the age of 11 in all Asian schools. The popularity of this art in these countries is associated with a small variety of food. To decorate rice and vegetables, people came up with carving figures and characters from them. Crafts from vegetables visually pleased the eye of the eater.

Residents of Europe did not immediately become interested in such a design of dishes, because they did not suffer from monotony anyway. The European table contained not only vegetable food, there was also meat, and fish, and poultry. Therefore, quite recently, in connection with the development of a network of elite restaurants, culinary arts and the need to attract visitors, European masters began to engage in carving.

How can I cut out figures from vegetables?

To create crafts from vegetables with your own hands, use a sharp knife. There are elements that are cut with even scissors, but it is believed that the best tool is a Thai knife. If you decide to make an ornament, cut a bouquet of flowers, then you will need special knives with V-shaped, square or serrated blades.

In order to create thin plates of vegetables, use a vegetable cutter. When round balls are needed to create a composition, then you need to take a noisette spoon. There are also knives that make lateral grooves on the peel. But this is all you need if you are serious aboutdo such jobs in large numbers, for example, if you are a chef in a restaurant.

If you are just doing a craft for a school exhibition or decide to decorate a dish for a child, then a sharp knife and a vegetable cutter in every home are enough. Details of volumetric crafts are fastened together with toothpicks.

Baby Work

Children's vegetable crafts are quite simple. If parents want to suggest which figure can be made, then it will be enough to show the child this photo. You can verbally discuss how it needs to be done, but he must do the craft on his own. Many adults try to impose their help. This is a disservice, as children become passive and wait for their mother to do everything for them.

There is nothing difficult in this work. A cucumber car is made by cutting a hole for the driver in the middle. Cherry tomato plays its role, you can also use radishes. The driver's eyes are made by cutting small holes into which pieces of parsley root or onion are inserted. Black dots are usually made from olive pieces.

The wheels are represented by slices of another cucumber held on by toothpicks. Instead, you can cut carrots or dense radishes into circles, cut them out of pumpkins or zucchini. This will make the work look brighter, as there will be a variety of colors.

Mr Potato Head

A popular American toy and cartoon character can be created by yourself and in your kitchen. You will need one large potato, salad peppergreen, a few radishes, a sprig of parsley and one thin elongated potato. Use toothpicks to hold parts.

To keep such an original vegetable craft in a vertical position, the first thing you need to do is to make stops for a large potato from two halves of a thin potato, seating them on the bottom of the toothpicks. If the craft is still unstable, then you can cut off the bottom of the vegetable, creating a flat surface. To prevent the product from darkening, it is sprayed with lemon juice.

Several strips are cut out of green pepper and strengthened instead of ears and eyebrows. The eyes and mouth are radishes. In the photo, the nose is made of lemon, but if the whole craft should already be made of vegetables, then it can be replaced with carrots. The character's hair is represented by a sprig of parsley inserted into the hole at the top of the head.

Pink Elephant

Since the elephant is a large animal, the craft will be quite voluminous. You will need red cabbage, beets with a long tail, four eggplants for the legs. On the cabbage, beets are attached to the stump with toothpicks from the back. Her tail acts as an elephant's trunk. The elephant's ears are made by bending the outermost two cabbage leaves.

Eggplant-legs are pre-processed. The top with sepals and tail is cut off. Cabbage is put on even cuts on wooden skewers. The eyes are represented by beans. Pupils can be drawn with a marker.

Fun learning

When preparing a child for school, you can not onlycram letters, forcing children to read the alphabet, but also add a playful moment to learning by cutting out letters from vegetables. They are made from potatoes. Letters are made voluminous. This is a task for the parents of the baby. How to play with such an original alphabet, we will tell further.

Game task number 1. Using ink or carrot juice, you need to print the word spoken by mom on paper.

Didactic game "What's gone?" Several letters are laid out on the table (up to 10). The child must look at them carefully and memorize them for a short period of time. Then the baby closes his eyes, and the mother hides one letter. After the eyes are opened, he must name what is gone. The game develops not only memory and attention, but also helps to remember letters in a playful way.

Task number 2. Any subject picture is drawn on sheets of paper. Under each of them, the child should print its name.

Task number 3. Collect the given word from the letters on the table.

There are quite a lot of options for compiling exercises, fantasize, read pedagogical literature, diversify the tasks for the child on their own.

Vegetable monkey

What to do if the child does not want to eat vegetables in any way? No matter how you explain to him about the benefits of vitamins, nothing helps. There is a wonderful method to teach a child to eat vegetables, and even with a smile. This is vegetable carving. Read the master class below. Any mother can make such a funny monkey, and later a school-age child.

You will need a cucumber, carrots, olives, corn, cherry tomatoes. They start making crafts from the head. It's cherry tomatoes cut in half. Nearby on a plate are laid out the ears and the lower part of the head from round cucumber slices. The body is represented by a long vertical strip of cucumber. Hands, feet, tail and eyes are carved from carrots.

Instead of palms put corn kernels. The eyes and nose are slices of olives. If you serve vegetables in this form as a salad to a child, then he will definitely eat everything.

Vegetable Owl

You can put a lot of vegetables on one dish for a festive feast, decorating them in an original way. We used small sweet carrots, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce pepper. The owl's eyes are made from two identical cups with sauce, in which small whole tomatoes are dipped.

The body of an owl is assembled from sliced cucumbers, on both sides of which small tomatoes are laid out. The paws are made of short carrots folded into rays. The tousled head is also made from the sharp edges of small carrots. And here are the feathers of the wings - from chopped strips of salad pepper.

Bouquet of vegetables

To create such a composition, large vegetables are chosen, from which large dense circles can be cut. These are beets, pumpkin, celery root. The middles are made of contrasting colors. For work, special carving knives are used.

You can use a pumpkin or melon as a vase. Set the cut flowers onwooden skewers that are stuck into the base at different angles. Sprigs of fresh bay leaves add greenery to a bouquet of vegetables.

Dinner Flower

You can serve beautiful vegetables not only on holidays or try for a child. It is not difficult to create beauty with your own hands for an ordinary everyday dinner. It is enough to slice cucumbers, wash cherry tomatoes, peel carrots and cut radishes.

You don't have to use celery as stems. Many do not like him, but the green onion is more familiar to the inhabitants of our country. Use broccoli to taste.

Professional bouquet

If you are a fan of carving, then we can offer a variant of a more complex bouquet, consisting of chopped vegetables. Knives will need different. It is desirable to select vegetables dense. Carrots, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, pumpkins were used for flowers. The leaves were cut from the peel of cucumbers and pumpkins.

Tomatoes are cut in two ways. The first - the peel is cut in a spiral, forming the shape of a rose. The second method is to cut the peel into sectors and separate them from the main to the middle. Each petal is cut into strips along the edges.

Onions are peeled and cut in half. Then the layers are separated, and each separately at the edges is decorated with triangular notches. The layers are then folded back together with a shift of half a triangle. Round pieces of brighter vegetables - carrots or pumpkins - are inserted into the middle of the flowers. Decorate them with cells cut with a knife.

Carrots and pumpkins are cut into cylinders and each centimeter is cut into sectors. You can do the work from a single piece, or you can make a flower from several separate elements.

The cucumber is cut with a sharp knife, separating the pulp of the vegetable in layers. Leaves form an elongated shape. Each element is decorated in a unique way to make the leaves look different.

Tips for beginners

For those who want to do carving for themselves, providing a beautiful and original serving of dishes for holidays or family dinners, here are some important recommendations.

• Vegetables are best used in season. They are denser and juicier. Their colors are brighter and richer than those that have been preserved for a long time.
• Absolutely any vegetables that can be eaten fresh are suitable for work - tomatoes and cucumbers, carrots and beets, lettuce peppers of different colors and shapes, radishes, parsley root and celery. In addition to vegetables, you can use fruits and berries.
• If you are creating a simple table decoration that will not be eaten, then include potatoes and pumpkin, eggplant.
• To prevent potatoes and eggplant from turning brown, rub the slices with lemon juice.
• For autumn crafts from vegetables, it is advisable to take dense vegetables, without a soft core. Tomatoes are chosen with the fewest seeds.

Start small using the simple options given in this article. To perform such work, special knives are not needed, which are expensive. It will be enough sharp andthin knife, scissors and vegetable cutter. Get the kids involved in the craft. It's very exciting!