Job Title: Food Stylist Employers: Photographers, ad agencies, TV shows and movies, food-promotion agencies, cookbook authors Openings: Apprentice with an existing food stylist Salary Cap: Low six figures Number of Jobs: Hundreds

Denise Vivaldo's omelet, prepared for a cooking segment of the Donny & Marie talk show several years ago, looked so delicious that co-host Donny Osmond wanted to take a bite.

"I had told him not to, but he did anyway," says Vivaldo.

Osmond got a nasty surprise, because the secret ingredient in Vivaldo's omelet was cotton balls, which she had stuffed inside it to keep it looking as fluffy as possible. The cotton balls are just one of many tricks employed by Vivaldo, a food stylist whose job is to make food look flawless for TV shows, commercials, and books.

If a tomato isn't red enough, she'll touch it up with lipstick. If the lettuce within that delectable sandwich isn't holding just so, she'll keep it in place with wig pins. And that mouthwatering dish of ice cream miraculously not melting under studio lights? It's fake, made of powdered sugar and vegetable shortening, with a bit of real ice cream dripping over it. (Watch our interview with a food stylist on how to add flair to your holiday meal).
 
"It's like being a food engineer—you have to figure it out," says Vivaldo, who earns between $1,200 and $1,500 a day for her work.

Once, for a coffee commercial, Vivaldo had to create the perfect splash within a cup of coffee. She got a ladder, a handful of BBs, and started climbing.

"We did it about 50 times to get the perfect splash," says Vivaldo.  
 
Working in this field is "just another art form" for the San Francisco native who made jewelry, handbags, and various arts and crafts earlier in her career. As a child, she dreamed of building elaborate buffets—complete with ice sculptures—for cruise ships and hotels. Food styling was a natural choice, then, for a girl whose father and grandfather owned grocery stores and whose uncle was a chef at a San Francisco restaurant. "Food was a big part of our lives," she says.

Vivaldo became interested in food styling as a student at the California Culinary Academy in the mid-'80s. During a class trip to the offices of cooking and lifestyle publication, Sunset Magazine, she watched home economists in the test kitchen make food look irresistible for the camera. She was hooked.

After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles and began catering for such events as the Academy Awards Governors Ball and Hollywood wrap parties. She then segued into food styling, creating sumptuous-looking meals for TV shows, including The Love Boat and Melrose Place, and styling food for cooking segments of The Ellen Degeneres Show, Inside Dish with Rachael Ray, and The Tonight Show. She also helped develop recipes for cookbooks by Richard Simmons and Suzanne Somers.

Even when she's not working and just, say, shopping for apples, Vivaldo pays close attention to how food looks. "I'm very aware of the color, the freshness, a funny shape, what works, and what doesn't work," she says.

She's found one place, though, where she's able to turn off her radar. "I'm so glad, when I go to a restaurant, that someone else had to schlep and cook it," says Vivaldo. "I'm just grateful I didn't have to do anything."