experimenting with mushrooms

I purchased materials such as green and red food colouring, royal icing, cocktail sticks, button mushrooms and writing icing for my initial experimentation. 

1st experiment! 

I used red and green food colouring and painted straight onto the mushrooms to try and keep it looking exactly like a mushroom, but to add a surreal, vibrancy to it. Sadly this experiment did now work out well, as the food colouring sucked the life out of the mushroom and they went very wrinkly within a few hours. so they would not be suitable to sit in an installation for a few days.