Do you want to know how to hang real mushrooms on your wall? Me too! Here's everything I did to create these amazing floating fungi shelves, what went wrong, and what I would do next time to make the job easier!
What you need:
- Suitable bracket fungi
- Cutting tools & paintbrushes
- Matte interior wood varnish
- Command picture-hanging strips
Simple steps:
- Forage for bracket fungi
- Dry them out
- Cut straight, flat backs
- Varnish them
- Stick them on the wall
How I Did It:
Foraging for bracket fungi
Firstly, you'll have to go out and find some bracket fungi - we stumbled across a tree covered in artist conk mushrooms on a walk through the marshes, so brought three home with us to try to hang on the wall.
Drying out your bracket fungi
Allow the fungi to completely dry out - I left mine on a radiator for 5 days. Would recommend at least 3
Cutting straight, flat backs to sit flush against the wall
To make sure your fungi sit flush against the wall, I cut a straight(ish) line across the backs of each mushroom using a combination of a junior hacksaw and a serrated kitchen knife - definitely not the easiest option, but it got the job done in a pinch!
Recommendation
Cutting with a knife and junior hacksaw sucked - use a real saw!Recommendation
If you end up with an uneven surface after cutting, use sandpaper to even it out
Varnishing your bracket fungi
Now it's time to varnish - this is a very important step, as it stops the fungi from decomposing, and covering your room in spores! I used Ronseal Matte Interior Varnish and it looked excellent after one coat of brushing all over and then stippling to get in all the crevices. I did a second just to make sure it was fully covered. Each coat takes around an hour to dry.
Recommendation
The varnish gets very sticky when drying - if, like me, you're impatient and try to do the whole thing in one go, make sure you leave them flat side down to dry, so you won't see any imperfections.Recommendation
If you don't want to waste a whole tin of varnish, pour some out into a separate container before starting or you'll end up with spores in your varnish.
Mounting your bracket fungi on the wall
Once your varnish is dry, it's time to get them on the wall! Now, I just wanted to hang the mushrooms on the wall as a decoration, not actually hold any weight, so I just used 4 Command strips on each fungi (2 on the fungi, 2 on the wall) and they're holding up well so far!
Recommendation
A more stable way to mount your fungi to allow you to use them as shelves would be to use keyhole brackets in the back of each mushroom.