Make This Simple and Easy Faux Apple Centerpiece for Your Thanksgiving Table

Sometimes you don’t want to fuss with an over the top centerpiece for Thanksgiving dinner. Or maybe you’d just like to go in a different direction than the traditional orange and pumpkins. Any faux fruit or vegetable can be used to easily style your Thanksgiving table. Take a look at how I transformed some simple plastic fruit into a beautiful faux apple centerpiece for our fall dining room table.

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A couple of months ago I create this simple fall centerpiece with a neutral pumpkin vase, but I love to change up my looks often.

I had some faux apples lying around from being used as a spring bowl filler earlier this year, so I decided to give them a fresh coat of paint and turn them into something a little more neutral for my fall decor.

I’ve been into neutral decor lately with just a touch of glam so I knew I wanted to add in some gold to this project wherever possible.

I headed to the craft store and picked up a can of flat white spray paint. I specifically wanted a matte finish for a more rustic look so the fruit didn’t have a shiny fake sheen to them.

Bonus, this paint dried super fast! So it was really easy to work with.

I also grabbed a small bottle of metallic gold craft paint that I planned to use to paint the stems of the apples with.

Supplies needed for this faux apple centerpiece

• Plastic coat hanger
• scissors
• Set of foam fruit
• White flat Spray paint
• Metallic craft paint and small artist brush
• Fishing line or durable heavyweight string
• Wood grilling skewers
• Faux or real greenery of your choice
• Vase or floral container

How to make this easy faux apple centerpiece for your own table

Spray paint your faux apples or fruit

This project is fairly simple and the majority of it revolves around spray painting your faux fruit. If you’re a pro at spray painting then by all means, dive right in.

But, if you’re known to get a little too impatient with the spray paint and wind up making a lot of mistakes (hand raised high over here), then you might want to follow some fool proof steps I took to get a flawless paint finish.

Since I needed to cover all of the odd curved angles of these apples I decided to suspend them all in my garage to get them fully coated with paint and eliminate some extra drying time. I attached strands of fishing line to each apple stem and secured it with a double knot.

Then I strung each apple from a regular plastic coat hanger varying the lengths between each apple. It’s important that you don’t hang them all side by side in order to avoid them touching and ruining your paint finish during the process.

Start painting your apples using short quick bursts from your spray paint can. If you keep your finger on the nozzle you risk over spraying which will cause drips and paint streaks.

Pro tip

Just in case you get a little impatient, and decide to go against what I just recommended, grab a wet paper towel to blot up the excess paint from your fruit and then lightly spray to recover the bare spots.

I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with myself for coming up with this little spray painting hack, because typically I’d just thrown them down on a piece of cardboard and wait for them to dry before covering all the angles.

Which usually results in me stepping in spray paint, knocking things over and ruining my paint job, and a lovely spray paint outline on my garage floor because I get a little too overzealous with the paint.

This hack cut down on the drying time, which was also impressive. I think the combination of the matte finish and the foam material of the fruit caused it to absorb and dry much quicker than plastic.

Paint the stems of your faux apples or fruit

Once your apples or fruit have fully dried (mine took about an hour), then you’re ready to add a little glam to the stems with your metallic craft paint. The spray paint caused the fishing line to stick to my stems, so I used scissors to cut them off before I could paint them.

Using a small craft or artist’s brush, add a small amount of gold paint and begin painting your stems starting closest to the base of the apple.

Be careful not to go too fast or you’ll end up with gold paint on your fresh white fruit that doesn’t come off easily.

At one point I cracked some of the dried white paint off of my stems to paint them gold, but I realized it covers better if you just leave the dried spray paint on the stems. Once you’ve finished painting, let them dry for about another hour before you move on to assembling your centerpiece.

Assemble your faux apple centerpiece

Finally you’re ready to bring it all together to finish up your centerpiece.

Now that your faux fruit is dried you’re going to take your wood skewers and begin inserting one in the bottom of each piece of fruit to secure it. Be careful not to use too much force or you may end up pushing the skewer all the way through. 

Once you have all of your fruit picks assembled you’re ready to create a quick centerpiece.

I used some extra faux eucalyptus bushes I had lying around, but you can use any type of floral or greenery for your own centerpiece. I found that the most eye catching look came from using contrasting colors and I love how the dark green leaves looks against the matte white apples.

I used a spare blue and white ceramic vase and began by placing both of my eucalyptus bushes inside.

I then staggered the apple picks throughout the arrangement one at a time. Make sure to place them at different heights to add visual interest. Once I had them in place I did some further rearranging to make sure they weren’t all sticking up perfectly straight.

I love how quick and easy this faux apple centerpiece was to put together. The longest part of the project was waiting for the paint to dry. What do you think? Would you use faux fruit in your Thanksgiving table décor?

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