THEATER PROPS: Fake and Bake Time Again! Day 1 Fake spaghetti, salad, carrots and bread! Yum!

So, I'm creating fake food again for Main Street Theater - fab theater in Houston! The production is called THIS which opens on April 7th. Get your tickets at http://www.mainstreettheater.com

I have discovered that I thoroughly enjoy creating fake food to use as props! It's absolutely stimulating to try different techniques to make the most believable food that functions best for the actors, director and scene. It's crazy fun looking at conventional items and picturing it as something totally different---and in this case, something stage "edible"... in theory!! 

I'm working on making spaghetti...but using REAL COOKED spaghetti in this first test. I think everyone has used yarn, string, etc... but I wanted to see if slightly cooked spaghetti would work. 

Steps:

1) Cooked spaghetti (approx 5 minutes so it would expand/be flexible).

2) Once dry, I coated it in Mod Podge. (Mod Podge worked in the summer camp days of making masterpieces out of uncooked pasta... so why not try it with slightly cooked pasta?) 

3) Crumpled up brown lunch sacks to make small meatballs and stuck those in the pasta. 

4) Mixed in little chunks of wood to replicate cut tomatoes and also woodshavings for texture and adhesiveness. 

5) Once Mod Podge dried, I blobbed hot glue in pools to make it appear sauce-like, let it cool, and then painted it red. 

6) Added bits of peppercorns and sprinkled on wood shavings to look like parmesan cheese. 

Question - Will it mold? Will it shrink? Will it sTink? Will it be a siren call to ants, roaches and tiny nameless rodents? Lol! Looks great right now, but we shall see if it molds or lasts for 4 weeks! Fingers crossed! If this doesn't work, I'm going to try some ideas my fantastic prop friends, Jodi Bob and Megan suggested.

Btw, I made a fake salad, glued on a piece of foam "bread", and then created baby carrots out of orange modeling clay ---to go with a few real carrots the actor has to eat.  Pic is a work in progress. Still need to add salad and carrot touches and glaze the sauce...but here it is as of now. Hope the spaghetti doesn't shrink!!!