This is one of those times that I started crafting and did not stop to take a critical photo. I will include a photo of a different carousel animal to show the part I missed taking a picture of for this animal. Actually, I missed a couple of shots.
This photo is where I left off last time on the blog. I had cut out four copies of my figure. Two of the figures have toothpicks glued to them with hot glue to strengthen the flimsy card stock. I was not going for an anatomically correct skeleton, obviously.
This second photo shows where I have covered one of the figures that had the toothpicks glued on covered by one of the figures without the toothpicks. These pieces were carefully matched up to make it even and then hot glued one section at a time make sure the sides remained even all around. Now the toothpicks are no longer visible and actually support both sides of the cardstock figures. After that, I taped over the cardboard figures with masking tape. The tape will offer a barrier so that the cardstock will not become soggy.
I used small pieces of corrugated cardboard strips to act as spacers between the two ram figures. If you read the last post on this, you may remember that there was some problem with the book on carousel animals that I had purchased. The instructions for the carousel goat were missing. So, I just had to wing it to figure out what size these strips should be.
This is a picture of the spacers as I placed them on one of the carousel horses. Each piece of cardboard is hot glued onto place. Then the second piece of the figure was glued down on top of the spacers. It sounds easy enough, but it takes more time than you would think to figure out where these spacers should be placed to give enough support without being in the way of upcoming work and making sure the pieces remain even. Remember that sooner or later, the pole that will hold up the animal will need to be placed at a future point in the project.
Now, back to the Ram. After the spacers are in place, I used a strip of an old file folder to cover the open areas along the front, back, top and bottom of the carousel animal.
I have found that the least aggravating way to get this done was to make the strip a little wider than the area it was to cover, making sure that the edges extended over both sides of the animal. I went along the support posts hot glueing each one to the file folder strip.
When gluing the strip was completed, I used a sharp craft knife and followed along the edge of the animal to cut off any excess so that the file folder sits flush with the edges. There are a few gaps especially around some of the curves. That is okay. They will later be covered with tape. The upper and lower areas of the legs are not built up at this point. That will be done later.
This picture shows the animal from the rear view. I have also added the base for the Ram's horns and the tail. In the top photo you can see the Ram's tail as part of the initial outline. It was cut off when I made the figures because a tail on each side of the animal would have been wrong. After the Ram was taped, I added a tail using bits of carboard, hot glue, and tape.
The horns are not easy to see in the photos, but they are made from small pieces of a chenille stem. With twenty-twenty hindsight, I should have used something else. It worked, and it fulfilled my need for something that had a little bit of bulk, but it was a little too flimsy.
It was hard to keep the horns from bending out of place while I was trying to cover it with paper mâché. Since the animal is so small, it was difficult to wrap the strips around the horn. Any movement to the horns caused the chenille to detach from the head. The weight of the paper mâché was also a factor. It is heavy compared to the strength of the chenille stem. I had to go back in a couple of times with more hot glue to keep them on. They still seem a little fragile. I will need to put more paper mâché on the base of the horns to keep them from falling off the animal.
If I were to make the horns over again, I would probably have used a sturdier piece of wire. Also, instead of just gluing the wire to the head, I probably would drill a hole through the head, inserted a wire, and glued it into place. Then I would have bent the horns to their proper shape. It might have saved some time and trouble.
In the long run, things worked out okay with the horns. Could I have done it better? Maybe. It is also important to remember that the way one person works is not going to be the same as another person would do it. This could be from materials available or how much of a mess one can deal with on any particular project. My motto is "Use what you have."
From the picture on the left, you can see that the Ram's nose is very square. That was not intentional but caused by the straight edge of the support pieces. Next week in my blog post I will show how I dealt with this issue.
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