Green Man Pumpkin - Part 3 -Rebuilding the Paper Mâché Form

Last week I blogged about how to remove the paper mâché pumpkin its mold.  For information on that, scroll back to the previous post, or view it at 

folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com.  Note that the shapes are not all the same size.  The wider piece will be the area will be the side that will be used for placing the face so that it will not have a seam running through it.

Today I will show how to put the pumpkin back together again.  I use a multi-temperature glue gun to aid in putting it back together.  I used to try to do it just using regular white glue, but it takes a lot of holding and clamping it to make the pieces stick together.  It works, but it takes a lot longer to put it together.  The hot glue is faster.

As I showed in the last blog post, the cut pieces have black tabs on one side, and a corresponding slot for the tab to be inserted on the other.  (I marked the black tabs and cutting line with a black Sharpie marker before cutting the pumpkin apart.) 

I usually start by gluing the top and bottom edges together first so that the pumpkin will end up evenly at both ends.  Then, using a small prying tool, I work my way down the pumpkin inserting the tabs into their slots and making sure that the black cross lines match from one side to the other.  If you don't have a small prying tool, you could use a butter knife or some other long thin tool.

At this point the pumpkin only has four layers of paper mâché on it.  This allows the form to flex enough that you can persuade the pumpkin to return to its original shape.  If you only use three layers, the sides are not strong enough to hold their shape, and the pieces will curl inward.  It makes it a lot harder to make the pumpkin pieces move back into their original position.  Sometimes three layers will also rip.  This can be repaired, but it just takes more time and effort.  So, four layers is the amount of layers I prefer.   

After the top and bottom are glued, I hot glue the side of the pumpkin with the tab down to the first tab and around the three sides of the cut tab.  Then I insert the tab into its slot, making sure the horizontal lines are matching.  After that, I just hold the parts in place for a minute or so until the glue has time to set up and hold the parts together.  I continue working down the seam from one tab to the next, hot gluing and holding it together until the glue sets.  The last tab may need a little extra effort to pry it into place.

Using silicone finger protectors will help keep your fingers from getting burned by the glue.  I strongly recommend them for any project using hot glue.

The hot glue may dry with lumps and bumps along the seam.  Once the glue is dry, I use a sharp craft knife to pare down any lumpy glue so that the seam is as flat as I can make it. 

After the glue has dried, I cover the area with masking tape on both the inside and the outside of the section.  If there are some raised spots left, I may use layers of tape to taper any raised areas out to the side, so they won't be so noticeable. I will also cover any rips or tears to the form anywhere that needs it.  Use two layers of tape over the seam.  I usually lay one lengthwise and one crosswise.  Two layers of tape are needed because the glue is translucent.  When the pumpkin is lit (with a battery-operated light or candle) light will glow through the seams.  Extra layers of tape will help block the light.  

Once half of the pumpkin is together, I repeat the actions for the other half of the pumpkin.

I will add that putting the pumpkin together is not a quick process.  It is a good idea to work on this when you have plenty of time.  Rushing the process will lead to a less than perfect outcome.

Now that two halves of the pumpkin are back together, I add two layers of paper mâché paste over the tape both inside and outside of the pumpkin shell.  Although the glue and tape give the seams plenty of support, I want to make sure that everything is going to hold together.  Putting the two halves together puts a lot of strain on the pumpkin shell.  

The two halves go back together in the same manner as the other segments, matching the tabs and horizontal lines.  The shell will be a little more rigid than before.  It may take some extra pressure on the pry bar to force the pumpkin back to its original shape.  Then tape and paper mâché as before. There will now be two seams that are not taped on the inside. You will not see them and if you were keeping the pumpkin whole to paint without carving into this, it would be perfectly okay to proceed with painting at this point.  However, if you plan to carve a face into the pumpkin, these seams will need to be addressed at a later point in the process of opening up the pumpkin.

Readers of previous blog posts may recall that for this pumpkin I chose not to use the full stem on the pumpkin.  Before cutting the pumpkin off the mold, I marked the line where I wanted to cut off the stem.  (I was hoping that the top piece would just slide off.  Silly me.  I will have to go back and cut it off the mold.)  Anyway, for this pumpkin, the top of the stem is now open.  That will need to be addressed.

Before proceeding with covering the hole, I use my finger and rub some white glue along the cut edge of the top of the stem.  This helps to seal the area.  The layers of paper mâché tend to want to fan out when the edges are exposed.

 To cover the hole at the top of the pumpkin, 

I cut a circle out of a piece of an old file folder.   (You could use card stock or any flexible piece of cardboard for this.) I measure the diameter of the pumpkin at its widest point.  I will make the circle one-half inch (1.27 centimeters) in diameter larger than the width I measured.  I mark a quarter-inch (0.635 centimeters) circle on the inside of the circle.  It helps me to center the circle on the stem.

The pumpkin stem is not perfectly round, but this is a good place to start.  I place the circle on top of the stem and use scissors to snip the circle to the edge of the stem to form little tabs.  The tabs are bent down and hot glued into place.  Next, the cardboard circle is covered with two layers of tape and two layers of paper mâché.  I usually paper mâché the last two seams from putting the pumpkin back together at this time as well.  

At this point, the pumpkin is back together and ready for the next phase.  The next phase will be to add a face to the pumpkin.  In this picture I have marked the area where the face will be placed.  The outer circle is the outer edge of the mask that I will be making.  The inner circle is my cut line for opening up the area to add the face.  

I will end this post here.  Check back next week for instructions for making the face. 

Green Man Pumpkin - Part 2 - Removing the Paper Mâché Pumpkin from the Mold

In last week's post, I had come to the point that I was ready to cut the pumpkin shape off of its mold. 

As you can see in the picture on the right, I have marked a long cut line and several black rectangular shapes on the pumpkin with a black Sharpie pen.  The picture shows only one line of this.  There are actually four lines like this on the pumpkin.  The lines are not equidistant.  Before marking anything, I look at the pumpkin and determine the area that I want to us for the face.  I made that section a little wider than the others to accommodate the width of the face of the pumpkin, so that it will not have a seam running through the face.

For this pumpkin, I will not be using the whole stem.  I have marked to cut it shorter.  I don't want as much stem on this pumpkin as it may distract from decorations that will be on the upper rim.  

You need a sharp craft knife or box knife (more on this below) in order to cut the pumpkin off the mold.  At this point, the paper mâché is four layers thick.  It needs to be four layers.  Three layers will not work well.  I know because I have tried.  With three layers, the paper mâché is not strong enough to hold its shape.  It will curl inward when pulled off the mold.  It is also more prone to tearing than four layers.  You can use three layers, but it will be a lot more work to put the pumpkin back together.  It may not want to go back to its original shape and may result in the form not looking like the original.

Over the years, I have found that a small box knife works better than a sharp craft knife in cutting the layers apart.  The blade of the box knife is a little more flexible and helps on cutting on curves.  Once the first cut in made into the pumpkin, I come into the cut at about a forty-five-degree angle and work my way down the cut line, making sure to cut out the tabs.  A craft knife will work, but I find the box knife is much easier to use at this point.  Once you get the feeling for it, you will know when you have cut through the four layers and have reached the layer of Press and Seal.  If you are careful, you will not cut through the Press and Seal.  As long as you don't cut through the plastic wrap, you will not have any marks on the original form and can save it for later use.  If you should cut through and mark up the pumpkin form, you can always cover it with a layer or two of paper mâché and it will be as good as new.

So, starting at the top of the pumpkin, I first cut all the way around the stem.  (If I had wanted to use the whole stem, I would have taken the long cut mark all the way to the top of the pumpkin, having the lines meet at the top of the stem.  The lines would meet in a point at the very top surface of the stem.)

Once the top stem is cut around, I start cutting down the long cut line, taking care to cut around the dark black rectangular tabs.  One side of the cut will have the rectangular tabs attached; the other side will have a rectangular indentation from where the tabs were cut out.   Thes rectangles will be instrumental in putting the pumpkin pieces back together correctly. The horizontal lines along the cut line are important also.  They are also reference marks to help align the pumpkin pieces.  I cut the long cut lines like this for all four of the sections.  When everything is cut, I pull the pumpkin pieces apart into four pieces.

The pumpkin may need a little persuasion to get the first piece off.  The rest usually follow fairly easily.  Sometimes a piece will rip during the unmolding.  Don't worry!  This is paper mâché!  It can be fixed by using some hot glue, masking tape, and more layers of paper mâché.

Sometimes, the rectangular tabs are accidentally cut off or fall off during removal from the mold.  Once again, don't worry!  Save the tabs and glue them back into place, cover with tape on both the outside and inside of the section.  More paper mâché is going on shortly and will cover the section.  It will not show in the finished pumpkin.

I will stop here for today.  Next week, I will blog about putting the pumpkin back together.  Check back for more on this pumpkin build.  I think this pumpkin will turn into something spectacular.

Building the Green Man Pumpkin: The Beginning

As I said in my last blog post, I am working on two long-term projects.  I am pausing blogging about the carousel for a short time in order to get the other project under way.  While I do not have a time crunch on the carousel project, the pumpkin needs to be completed by Halloween.  So, I will be blogging for a couple of weeks on that project, then going back to the carousel project.   

Some of you may have seen pictures of the Green Man on signs or pictures of them in books.  (You can also see plenty of examples in Google Images.)  Basically, a Green Man is anthropomorphic figure that represents the spirit of vegetation.   Usually, he is represented in summer when everything is green and in full growth.  My intention is to portray the Green Man near harvest time, when the growing season is coming to a close and the fruits and vegetables are at their peak and autumn is just beginning to come into season.  I will have to see how it goes when I get that far.  I have concept of what to portray, but I will allow some of the details to develop organically as I go along.  But the first step is just to begin, and that is where things are today.

I am starting at the very beginning of how I make a pumpkin as it has been well over a year since one.  If you are interested in my other projects, scroll back through the blog posts or look at the blog at folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com

This is a mold of a pumpkin.  I created this mold by covering a real pumpkin with strip paper mâché.  Then I carefully cut the paper mâché off the pumpkin and then put it back together again.  You will see the method for this later in this post, so I won't go into that here, other than to say that when cutting the mold off the pumpkin with a craft knife, I nicked the live pumpkin in places, and that caused the pumpkin to rot rather quickly.  If you plan to make a mold from a real pumpkin, you might not want to use it as part of your decorations afterward.

Another option to use for a mold would plastic pumpkins, which are more likely to be available at other times of the year.  Or make your own pumpkin shape.  There are plenty of ways to do that, and I have used that for some of my paper mâché pumpkins.

In the photo above on the right, the pumpkin mold had been covered with a layer of Press and Seal.  Press and Seal is found in the plastic wrap aisle at many grocery stores.  This product will protect the mold from moisture, and the paper mâché will peel off from it easily when the project is finished.  It is very thin, and slightly tacky on one side.  If you use smaller strips, you can coat the pumpkin with it without having too much of a build up from the material.  

This is one of those Styrofoam heads that you can find in craft stores.  From past use of this mold, I have found that the features need more definition before starting to paper mâché.  The features that are on the base then to flatten out over multiple layers of paper mâché.  I built up the nose, lips, and cheeks with masking tape before covering it with the Press and Seal. However, I did not do a lot of buildup for the lips, just enough to show their placement.   Over different projects I planned to use different expressions, so I only wanted to have a slight hint of them for placement purposes.

When covering with the Press and Seal, it is important to have all of the strips overlap in order to keep out moisture.  The product stays in place well.  Most of the time I can leave the film on the mold and use it a second time before I have to remove and replace it.  

I am working a little ahead on this project, because it takes so long for the paper mâché to dry.  It will cut down on the amount of time between blog posts.  

This photo shows the pumpkin mold covered with four layers of strip paper mâché.   It is ready to be cut off of the mold.  I only use four layers for this part of the project because there will be many layers of paper mâché to come to put it all back together again.  More on that in a later post.

I will end here today.  Next week I will blog on how I get it off the mold and how to put it back together again.

Adding Muscles to the Carousel Horses

 Last blog post I showed pictures of how I made the carousel horses three-dimensional.  The sides of the horses were still flat.  Today I have pictures of how I gave the horses some muscles to make them seem more realistic.  

This is a photo of the horse before I started adding the musculature.  Notice that the edges of the horse are hard edges.  These edges will get softer as more layers of paper mâché are added.  

The horse's legs look very dainty at this point.  Unfortunately, they will look somewhat larger as more layer of paper mâché are added.  They may require some paring down to keep the legs from looking too large and heavy.  There will be more on that in a different blog post.  I am trying to have all of the animals up to this point before I move on to the next stage.

I made two horses.  Having two horses gives me two ways to experiment on how I want to proceed with making the animals.  (I say animals because not all of them will be horses.)  One method will be building up the musculature using just my usual method of building up with just paper and paste.  The other method will make use of small bits of foil and tape to form the muscles.

The first method, using just paper and flour paste did build up the animal's neck, shoulders, and haunches, but it took a long time to get the animal to have the shape I wanted.  It is hard to see the thicker areas in this picture, but there is definitely more shape to the horse.  With paper mâché, you should only add two layers at a time.  If you add more layers than that you run the risk of having the object start to develop mold, especially if the weather is raining or humid.

Actually, in all my years of working with paper mâché, I have only had one project develop mold.  I treated it with 91% alcohol, then dried it thoroughly by sitting it in front of a box fan.  That took care of the problem, and it did not continue to form mold.  However, it took a long time to get it to dry, and I was always wondering if the mold would reappear.  Although I kept that project around for years, it did not change the paper, and no mold ever showed through the paint.  

The second method was to use bits of aluminum foil to build up the shapes.  In this photo the neck, shoulder, and leg have had bits of aluminum foil shaped to resemble muscles.  Then they are taped over with masking tape to keep them in place.  The rump and thigh have already had the foil and tape in place.

It is important to remember that you build up the muscles to almost the size you want them, but not exactly as large as you want them.  There will be multiple layers of paper mâché on top of this and this will add more bulk.  The paper mâché will also smooth out some of the wrinkles you see in the picture.

I stopped adding foil at the thigh because extra layers of paper mâché will add enough bulk to the lower legs.  If I added foil to the lower legs now they would appear oversized.

This photo shows the two horses side by side.  The one on the left was the paper mâché only method.  The one on the right was the foil method.  

The horse on the left is bulkier and heavier than the one on the right.  It needed a lot of paper mâché to build up the muscles and I had to add a little to the middle to make it look right.  I am thinking at this point that the left horse might turn into a Clydesdale.  The other horse might be an Arabian.

All in all, the foil method was much faster.  This is important to know going forward.  Making a carousel is a long-term project.  Anything that can cut the time is helpful.

I will be working on other animals in the near future.  I will be blogging about them as they are being made.  My plan is to get all the animals to the point that they are ready for sanding and painting.  Then I can take them outside to do the sanding.  It will help keep down the mess in the studio.  

I will be taking a couple of weeks to work on my other long-term project.  I find that if I continue to work solely on one project for months at a time that I start to suffer from burn out.  Switching back and for between projects helps keep me interested and not getting stalled on any one project.  

My other project is a Green Man paper mâché pumpkin.  I have to get it started because it will also take months to complete, and it is already April.   I will be blogging on the beginnings of that project for the next couple of posts.  Check back next week to learn more about this project.  After a few posts on that, I will be back to blogging about the carousel animals.