Carousel Part 34-Menagerie Animals are Mounted on the Carousel-Photos

At long last, the menagerie animals have been permanently mounted on the carousel base.  I am absolutely elated.  It has taken a long time to get to this point.  I hope you enjoy the photos.

The project is almost finished.  I have all the components of the roof painted and they are ready to be assembled. 

I had hoped to have the roof finished, but it took much longer to paint than I had anticipated.  Not to mention that most of it was painted twice.  I had wanted to have a green roof.  My first color choice was too dark.  The second color was too light.  I just could not get it to the color I wanted.  So I caved in and painted the roof with the 14 karat gold paint to match the base.  I will probably finish the assembly today.  However, it won't be mounted to the housing until after I finish the face plaques that will be placed above the mirrors on the housing. 



My Plan B for creating the face plaques seems to be working.  I will be blogging more about that in my next blog post.  I don't think that they will all be complete, but I expect to have made some significant head way.

Okay, it seems that blogspot is going to give  me a really hard time today.  It will only let me post as many pictures as I have text.  I have been trying for several minutes to get the photos on there buit it keeps deleting the pictures it there is no text near it.  So, I guess I will give a brief recap of the project so far, just to have enough text to post the pictures. 

 The carousel is on a rotating ball bearing base that spins like a lazy susan serving utensil.  The rotating base has only recently been attached to the wooden base.  The fluted wooden base was purchased at my local craft store.  It was basically a craft piece used for making clocks.  On top of the base I made a wooden plank floor from skinny wooden craft sticks.  This floor was sanded, stained, and varnished  to look like a real wood floor.

The supports for the housing are quarter inch poplar sticks.  The walls are balsa wood.  The wooden walls have a couple of layers of paper mache' over them to cover the places where the walls join together.  The walls were then painted in stripes of white and gold.  Mirrors were mounted on the wall to reflect the animals.  I am currently working on some plaques to go above the mirrors. 


The menagerie animals were created from paper mache' over a poster board and toothpick armature.  Each animal was hand made and hand painted. The basic shape of the animals came from a book on carving carousel animals.  The author gave permission for people to use the graphed silhouettes provided that you hand copied the graphs.  I made my own copies, reducing the size from one-eighth scale to approximately one-sixteenth scale.


 The menagerie animals were created from paper mache' over a poster board and toothpick armature.  Each animal was hand made and hand painted. The basic shape of the animals came from a book on carving carousel animals.  The author gave permission for people to use the graphed silhouettes provided that you made your own hand drawn copies the graphs.  (As opposed to photocopying them.)  I drew my own copies, reducing the size from one-eighth scale to approximately one-sixteenth scale. 

Once the silhouettes were made, I traced them onto poster board, cut them out, traced around them to make a second shape.  The silhouettes were supported by small pieces of wood cut from tooth picks.  Then extra strips of poster board were cut and placed between the shapes to give them some depth.  After that the now three dimensional figures were covered in tape to help prevent moisture from the paper mache' causing the shapes to collapse.  The tape was also used to help build up the musculature of the animals.  The menagerie animals were then covered with layers of paper mache' by various methods.  Read back through the blog for specifics on the techniques. When the paper mache' was dry, the animals were painted and varnished.

At last I was able to get all my pictures on here.  Every once in a while the blog platform gives me a problem and I'm not sure why.  Most days it works like a charm.  Anyway, more than an hour and a half into this I have everything on here.

I'm really close to completing the project.  I hope you will check for further blog entries to see the completed carousel.