Starting the New Carousel Project

 I am starting on another carousel project.  I made a small one years ago, and now I am ready to attempt a larger one.  My plan is to make all of the animals first, then get on with the platform and housing.  This project will be in 1/8th scale.  It may be large enough that I will motorize it rather than having it on a hand spun platform as I did with the previous one.

I have two books on carving carousel animals.  The books give patterns and dimensions for the animals.  However, I am not planning to carve the animals.  I will make them out of paper máchê.  The process of construction will be very different, but the patterns and the suggested dimensions will be very helpful.

To begin the process I am working on the first animal, which will be a horse.  The first thing I needed to do was to make a pattern.  I had to modify the pattern a little bit because the horse in the pattern had an open mouth with upper and lower teeth showing.  I did not want to have the horse with an open mouth because it would be very difficult to create teeth that small in paper máchê.   I drew the pattern on graph paper, then made the corrections to the head. 

The upper photo is for the back side of the horse.  The front of the horse is in a lower portion of the picture.  I drew the saddle in for future reference to remind myself that a portion of the saddle was in the drawing.  Otherwise, the horse figure looked a little weird.

The side of the horse that faces the public is called the Romance side.  That side of the animal is usually decorated much more ornately than the far side.  I am not showing any of the decorations on the pattern.  They may vary significantly from the proposed decorations in the carousel book.

I traced my version of the patterns on some heavy blue paper that I had on hand.  I don't know the weight of the paper.  It did not come in its original box.  Someone had passed their leftover paper to me when they finished their project.  It was not in the original packaging.  The paper is about the weight of cardstock.  All of it is bright blue. One sheet by itself will not be strong enough.  I had to cut out two sheets for each side.  They will be glued together.  

The shapes were cut out of the card stock with a craft knife.  the ears look a little small and out of place, but I have to account for the size of the ears as they are covered with paper máchê.   The neck does not look right in the drawing, but as above, that area will be filled in with layers of paper máchê. In the end, the head will be almost touching the neck.

So this is the first phase of bring my carousel horse from an idea into manifestation.  Next week I will be blogging about how I created a three- dimensional animal from a flat sheet of paper.