How To Mummify a Barbie!

April 26, 2007 at 8:41 am (Uncategorized)

No, I am not kidding….We actually mummified Barbie’s!  Well, actually 2 GI Joe’s and 1 Barbie!  Here’s what we did:

We bought the cheapest Barbie’s I could find at the Thrift Store.  I got GI Joe’s for the boys and Barbie for my daughter.  I spent $4.00 total on them.

Then I used the Magic Tree House Research Guide – Mummies and Pyramids as guide for our mummification process.

Here are the steps we took:

1.  Remove all the organs except the heart.  We did this by talking about the organs that would be removed and then drawing a red heart on the chest of each doll with a Sharpie Marker to represent leaving the heart in.

2.  Next we washed the body with  "wine"  (we used  white wine vinegar diluted in water.)  and rubbed the  it with  oils and spices.  (We used olive oil with a little nutmeg and cinnamon.)

3.  Now, we rubbed the body with kosher sea salt.

4.  Next we left our bodies to dry for 40 days!  (We used 1 minute to represent 1 day, so we really left them rest for 40 minutes.)

5. While we were waiting for 40 minutes to pass we tore strips of muslin appprox. 1 inch wide.  Then we made a paste of 1 part flour and 3 parts water.  
(The boys were pretending to be the Incredible Hulk while ripping the fabric.  Hence the weird face!  LOL)

6.  We also made the amulets that were wound into the cloth with the mummies.  We made ours out of fun foam.

7.  At last we  wet each strip in the flour/water mixture and wrapped the mummies! (BTW, we washed all the oil and etc. off the dolls before we started wrapping. This would not have been part of the mummification process, but our corpses were plastic!  LOL)

8.  Once they were completely covered with several layers of muslin we left them to dry. 

There you have it!  Mummified Barbie’s!  LOL  I don’t think my kids will forget this school day anytime soon!!

(If you are WAY more brave than me here are the directions to mummify a chicken! )