I have an order for a cake shaped like a cotton gin.    It will be covered with fondant.  I hope to use cotton candy for the cotton on the gin.   I envision having  cotton candy bolls in their bracts on the top front of the gin where they normally go in...and "clean" cotton balls at the end of the gin.  

I have made the bracts for the cotton bolls from gumpaste so they are very very dry.   I know cotton candy doesn't have a long shelf life (I'm using packaged white cotton candy from Oriental Trading) and right now I'm experimenting with just how long that shelf life is when exposed to dry air.   Assuming I have at least an hour or two, my primary problem is how to attach the bolls to the bracts (for you non-cotton-growing-southerners...the bracts are the brown dried leafs that cup around the boll).   The adhesive can't have moisture or the cotton candy will melt.   Any ideas?   Failing that, anyone have any ideas of what alternative material I can use to represent the cotton boll other than formed gumpaste/fondant?  Thanks in advance for your kind consideration.

ACrisco?

good call...I'll test it now