Doris Jenkins' fruit bowls are exactly that -- decorative shapes carved out of cantaloupes, honeydews and watermelons, functional containers that hold blueberries, strawberries, dip and pieces of the melon the bowl is made from.
Other sculptors may chisel their creations for extended periods of time. Melon carvers, though, need little more than kitchen utensils, a taped-on pattern and less than 30 minutes to finish products that are temporary but tasty.
"It's an artistic thing, but you don't have to be artistic to do it. It is such an easy thing to learn," said Jenkins, 74, of Woodbine, who has taught melon carving for about a decade.
"It's worth a try," she said. "One thing about melon carving, you can always eat your mistakes."
Jenkins, who also teaches cake decorating and pumpkin carving, holds melon-carving classes about twice a year for Carroll County's Department of Recreation and Parks.
Each two-and-a-half hour session begins with lessons on how to carve and then allows participants the opportunity to make their own pieces.
"I just like to make food attractive," Jenkins said. "We eat with our eyes. Things that look good, are nicely put together, they sell themselves. I've cooked all my life. This was just the natural next step."
At a recent class, Nancy Anders first made a bird from an apple, followed by the cantaloupe swan fruit bowl.
"It was something I hadn't tried before," said Anders, of Taneytown. "I really enjoyed ... [making] something beautiful from something so simple."
To carve a cantaloupe into a swan fruit bowl, Jenkins begins by washing the melon and then placing it on a flat surface, such as a cutting board or a picnic table covered by a tablecloth. She then picks an end of the fruit that will be the bottom and cuts a small slice from there so that the melon can sit level.
Next, Jenkins places the pattern around the side of the melon, attaching it with masking tape. Afterward, she uses a garnishing knife to carve the smallest areas of the pattern first and then cuts along the rest of the pattern, beginning at the nape of the swan's neck and proceeding toward its wings.
As Jenkins pushes her knife into where the seeds are, juice dribbles on the pattern. Once she's done cutting along the pattern, she cuts the unneeded fruit into pieces to help lift it out.
"And these are good to eat," Jenkins said. "The fruit is very appealing -- fresh, light, nutritious, the whole bit."
She then moves from a sharp utensil to a round one, grabbing a large spoon to empty seeds from the inside of the cantaloupe. Once this is completed, Jenkins switches to a paring knife, thinning the walls of the melon and producing more ripe fruit to eat.
This step leaves more room inside the bowl and helps make the pattern look better, she said.
"It's pretty," Jenkins said. "The students are surprised that it's so easy to actually do it."
Final products aren't necessarily limited to the basic fruit bowl -- other designs include baskets with handles, an angelfish lantern with a tea light inside and the stars and stripes of the American flag.
Other artists also peel designs out of the rind to add extra flair to the outside of a watermelon.
"It's amazing what can be done," Jenkins said. "There's nothing saying exactly how to do it. It's a free art. It's just where your imagination takes you and what you can make work."