Good day to you all. Finally I have not only crafted, but also photographed along the way! Hoorah can you believe it?
My dad saves £2 coins and I thought that sounded like a good idea. I am afterall saving for a wedding, house and everything else grownups save for. As they say every penny counts, well as you can't even get penny sweets for a penny anymore It will be every Pound counts.
Well I needed somewhere to put these coins, and it needed to be somewhere I wouldn't be able to access and dip into. Ah I can craft something finally, excellent ooooh a Papier-mâché Piggy Bank would be fun.
I flashed back to my childhood, watching Artattack and Neil Buchanan making all those cool Papier-mâché dragons what not. I remember it being so simple, a balloon some PVA and water some torn up newspaper and away you go. Well thats what I did! It wasn't quite like I remember.
After what felt like days of sticking bits of newspaper to a balloon, I decided I would leave my little piggy to dry overnight. My back and knees were killing me from sitting on the floor, for what turned out to be about 3 hours. Again I don't remember this being an issue when I was younger and recreating all the things I had been watching on TV.
Next morning came and I went to check on the masterpiece expecting to find a nice hard shell ready for painting and a balloon ready to be popped.......
No that is not what I found! What I found was a balloon wrapped in soft still wet newspaper!! I was not happy and this is definitely not how I remember things going on Artattack. It was also at this point I realised Neil used to shape all the body parts onto the balloon and would have done the Papier-mâché over the top........ well yeah I forgot about that bit.
I thought may be I could speed up the drying process by using my hair dryer. Well this was interesting as the balloon spun around with the air the shell seemed to be getting harder and well drying. Ahh yes that was until I noticed the balloon starting to protrude from the hole at the top. So I guess there would be some kind of scientific explanation about the heat causing the air in the balloon to expand or something. Anyway so I thought I should stop drying now as the outside actually felt quite dry. Well within a few minutes the balloon cooled and it all began to shrivel and and became wet newspaper again. ARRGGGHHHH I'm not really that patient with this type of craft I mean the fun bit is the painting.
So i put the hair dryer on again for a bit long this time. I figured that well the outside was dry perhaps it could do with some air on the inside, I'm sure its dry enough to hold its shape now, I can pop the balloon right.....? NO! But I did it anyway, I tried a pin and poked the top...Nothing! Poke! Poke! Poke! and still nothing so I snipped at it with scissors, this worked but Oh NOOOO the balloon had stuck to the walls of the shell and as the balloon deflated it took the sides with it. Out came the hair dryer again it worked quite well to reinflate the shell but I couldn't do this all day so I had to re-inflate another balloon inside again. I think I mentioned something in an earlier post about getting ahead of yourself. Well this is the result of trying to rush things!!
So this time a left the little piggy to dry for another few hours. When I came back to it, I realised I would probably need to add a few more layers and also add the feet and nose. I used bit of an egg box to do this.
Now how do I get these bits to stick? I'm going to have to do yet more layers. I am extremely bored of Papier-mâché now! Neil Buchanan didn't seem to take this long to make things. Neil also always finished his Papier-mâché with a layer of white tissue paper, so it was easier to paint, so I got to it.
Whilst I was doing this, Mark decided he would get involved and start making his piggy too. Having seen how mine went wrong he tried a different technique.
I thought it would be nice to do the backs, and fronts of the ears in different colours. I used some yarn from yet another project to sew around the edges. This took me surprisingly long to do, I think I watched an entire movie and had only completed one ear.
Finally finally I can paint yay! Oh now how am I going to paint the little fella? I always ruin things when I just free hand with no plan. Whilst I cut a slot for the coin to go into, which I did perfectly without even measuring. I planned how I would paint the pig. I had some nice metallic colours blue, pink and purple which I thought would be nice all sponged on together kind of like Disco camouflage.
My dad saves £2 coins and I thought that sounded like a good idea. I am afterall saving for a wedding, house and everything else grownups save for. As they say every penny counts, well as you can't even get penny sweets for a penny anymore It will be every Pound counts.
Well I needed somewhere to put these coins, and it needed to be somewhere I wouldn't be able to access and dip into. Ah I can craft something finally, excellent ooooh a Papier-mâché Piggy Bank would be fun.
I flashed back to my childhood, watching Artattack and Neil Buchanan making all those cool Papier-mâché dragons what not. I remember it being so simple, a balloon some PVA and water some torn up newspaper and away you go. Well thats what I did! It wasn't quite like I remember.
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| Supplies |
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| Paper and watered down glue |
After what felt like days of sticking bits of newspaper to a balloon, I decided I would leave my little piggy to dry overnight. My back and knees were killing me from sitting on the floor, for what turned out to be about 3 hours. Again I don't remember this being an issue when I was younger and recreating all the things I had been watching on TV.
 |
| Never ending paper and glueing |
Next morning came and I went to check on the masterpiece expecting to find a nice hard shell ready for painting and a balloon ready to be popped.......
No that is not what I found! What I found was a balloon wrapped in soft still wet newspaper!! I was not happy and this is definitely not how I remember things going on Artattack. It was also at this point I realised Neil used to shape all the body parts onto the balloon and would have done the Papier-mâché over the top........ well yeah I forgot about that bit.
I thought may be I could speed up the drying process by using my hair dryer. Well this was interesting as the balloon spun around with the air the shell seemed to be getting harder and well drying. Ahh yes that was until I noticed the balloon starting to protrude from the hole at the top. So I guess there would be some kind of scientific explanation about the heat causing the air in the balloon to expand or something. Anyway so I thought I should stop drying now as the outside actually felt quite dry. Well within a few minutes the balloon cooled and it all began to shrivel and and became wet newspaper again. ARRGGGHHHH I'm not really that patient with this type of craft I mean the fun bit is the painting.
So i put the hair dryer on again for a bit long this time. I figured that well the outside was dry perhaps it could do with some air on the inside, I'm sure its dry enough to hold its shape now, I can pop the balloon right.....? NO! But I did it anyway, I tried a pin and poked the top...Nothing! Poke! Poke! Poke! and still nothing so I snipped at it with scissors, this worked but Oh NOOOO the balloon had stuck to the walls of the shell and as the balloon deflated it took the sides with it. Out came the hair dryer again it worked quite well to reinflate the shell but I couldn't do this all day so I had to re-inflate another balloon inside again. I think I mentioned something in an earlier post about getting ahead of yourself. Well this is the result of trying to rush things!!
So this time a left the little piggy to dry for another few hours. When I came back to it, I realised I would probably need to add a few more layers and also add the feet and nose. I used bit of an egg box to do this.
Whilst I was doing this, Mark decided he would get involved and start making his piggy too. Having seen how mine went wrong he tried a different technique.
Once I finished my final layer, I stood piggy up on his new feet to dry ERROR!! The body was still wet so he started to cave in under his weight. So I popped in him a flower pot to dry on his bum. I left him a full week to dry before I did anything else with him.
As I had not made Papier-mâché ears I decided I would make them out of felt that I had bought for an earlier project that I never got around to doing.
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So there you go my finished piggy. We had some tough times but we got through it.
Till next time, Happy Crafting!
