Homemade foam flock

In this week's Huh. What Do You Know? It Worked! category, we have homemade foam scenic flock, as prepared in a food blender.

I admit I had doubts when I read about this method of producing cheap and cheerful foam flock. Visions of burned-out blenders danced before my eyes, but since it's my blender, I thought I'd give it a go. We've got wads of foam sheeting left over from our house move, so I took a chunk of that, tore it into pieces about the size of a chestnut, and tossed it into the blender along with a cup full of water. Speeding it up by stages helped. The water carries the foam into the blades, which sliced and diced it into a cornmeal consistency.

Once done I cleaned the blender carefully - I don't want any bits of foam in our food. I'm making 10mm/15mm size trees in Autumn foliage, so I added a few dollops of orange and yellow craft paint to the foam then squeezed it so it absorbed the paint. I could've added the paint at the start, but thought it a step too far where appliances intended for food prep are concerned. Once done, I spread the foam out to dry, which only took three or four hours.

The core of the trees themselves will be teasels. I have a box full of these harvested a couple of years ago. Thistles are considered an invasive species around here, so I'm doing the environment a favour by taking the seed heads out of circulation. I'll use spray adhesive on the teasels, then roll them in the foam. The spikes will hold the foam in place while the glue dries. I'm of two minds whether to paint the trees, or leave them the natural yellow foam colour. I'll post photos of the results, unless they're too unspeakably awful so I'll need to discard the lot and pretend I didn't make them in the first place...