Paper Mâché Carousel Animals - Tiger - Part 8

I am still working on the tiger for my carousel.  I had hoped to have the cotton clay layer added before this post, but that did not work out.  Unseasonably cool temperatures allowed my husband and I to get some work done we had been putting off because it was just too hot and humid.  So only a small step forward on this project.

Two layers of standard strip paper mâché have been added to the tiger.  I wanted to have some extra layers of protection for the figure before adding the cotton clay.  That clay will be moist for about twenty-four hours.  I did not want it to soften the cardstock and cause the animal shape to sag or collapse.

Right now, the animal almost looks like a bear more than a tiger.  It will look different after the tail is added.  The face still needs a little work also.  The front of the face looks a little flat.  I plan to work on that when I add the clay.

I had figures collapse on a project once years ago.  I was making some fairly tall figures that I wanted to paint for a Christmas scene.  My paste was too moist, and it permeated the tape and made the underlying cardboard soggy.  Over the course of a few hours, I kept hearing thuds coming from my studio as one by one the figures collapsed and fell from the worktable to the floor.  It was pretty disheartening.  I never did get back to that project. 

Anyway, today I plan to try to work with the cotton clay.  I have spent a couple of hours tearing cotton balls into small shreds of cotton this past week.  With twenty-twenty hindsight, I will say that I probably should have been wearing a mask while I did this.  Little fluffs of cotton kept flying up to my face.  Keeping a lint roller handy would be helpful as well.  I was covered with little strands of cotton by the time I was finished.

I found the recipe for cotton clay on the internet.  It calls for boiling the cotton with flour and water.  I keep an old pot that I don't use for food for these types of projects.  I am really not thrilled with the whole boiling and waiting for it to cool thing.  I once did a project where I had to boil some wool.  It really stank.  Cotton may not do the same thing, but I want to try something else first. 

Boiling the cotton may cause the fibers to open up more to accept the paper mâché mixture better and make the clay a more cohesive clay, but I am not sure that it is totally necessary.  I have some paper mâché clay recipes that called for boiling the paper first but really worked just as well by soaking the paper over night.

I think I would prefer to just soak cotton until it is damp and then squeeze any excess moisture out of it. Then mix it with flour, water, and diluted glue.  I may try that first to see if it works.  

So that is about it for today.  I will be blogging next week on what happened with the cotton clay.  The worst that could happen is I have to start over on the tiger or the clay (or both).

Check back next week (Monday or Tuesday) for the next blog post.

Paper Mâché Carousel Animals - Part 7 - Tiger Build Continues

I am still working on creating the paper mâché tiger.  It was a busy week for me, and I did not have a lot of time to work on it.  However, any progress is better than no progress. Besides being busy, I was distracted while I was working on it and made a mistake or two.  Fortunately, it was one that could be recovered from as I continue to work on the animal.

Bad crafting days, everyone has one at some point.  Whether it is catching up thread or fabric under a sewing machine foot, having to pull out some rows of knitting because of misreading the pattern, or making a bad cut on a piece of wood; sooner or later any crafter is going to make a mistake.  This week was my turn.  I bring this up because I want people to know it happens and that not every project goes perfectly from start to finish.  It is easy to become discouraged when things do not go well.  

Many people have what are referred to as UFOs.  No not flying saucers, it stands for Unfinished Objects. It is not uncommon for people to have incomplete craft projects hanging around because of some problem that caused them to become discouraged.  I used to have those too, but as I became a little better at the crafts, I made the decision that I would no longer leave a craft project unfinished.  I will complete the project even if it is never going to meet my expectations.  Most of the time it comes out better than I thought it would.  

Once you make a mistake you have to decide whether that piece of the project is ruined beyond fixing and you need to start over or if you can come up with a solution to fix the problem.  Sometimes the fix may take your craft item in a completely different direction from what you envisioned.  You will be surprised at what you can come up with to fix a problem

Last week I stopped working after drawing the images of the Romance side (The side that faces outwards.) and the inward facing side. I also transferred the images to some cardstock by tracing over the images with carbon paper underneath the drawing.  Then I cut them out using a sharp craft knife.  All seemed well at the time.  It was not until later that I discovered a problem with the drawing, but that was not the worst of the mistake on this animal.  There were a couple of mistakes.

The first error was that when I returned to work on the animal I did not stop to think through where I was on the project.  My next step in creating the three-dimensional figure is that I stiffen the blue cardstock by gluing toothpicks on the inside of the animal to give it a "skeleton".  It is not an actual skeleton, just toothpicks glued on where needed to make it sturdy.  

In my defense, I will add that not only was I distracted by other things going on, but I was also in brain fog because I had spent the morning converting the American units of measure to centimeters and millimeters while determining the lengths for the internal cross piece supports.  It was easier for me to work with the metric system as my rulers are difficult to read when looking at 16ths and 32nds of an inch.  

I neglected to take a photo of the cross pieces and the strips of folder that covered the top and bottom of the animal.  If you would like to see the full explanation as to how these were installed, you can scroll back to my carousel horse or goat blog posts to see that part of the process.  If you are not able to see them, you can look at them by going to my blog IRL: folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com.  I am adding a photo of the horse cross pieces here for quick reference.

Anyway, long story short, I cut the cross-pieces out to my converted lengths and started to glue them on.  When I finished gluing them on, I held the animal up and thought, "Why is this animal so flimsy compared to the others?"  That was when I realized that I had glued in the cross pieces before I had added the toothpick skeleton.  My choices at this point were either to undo the work that had already been done, or I could glue the skeleton to the outside before I covered the animal with tape.  In this case, I chose to glue the toothpicks to the outside.  As you could see from the top photo, they are quite visible at this point.  However, when the animal is completed, they will not be visible because I plan to cover the animal with a layer of homemade clay.  More on the clay in a moment.

So, on to the second mistake.  Apparently, my interpretation of the tiger pattern was not exactly right.  (The size of the tiger pattern was large compared to the horses, and I needed to make a reduced pattern) I made the legs on one side were too short.  I did not discover this until I had the animal skeleton on, and the piece was all taped up.  The tiger had a distinct lean to the left when it was stood up on its four legs.  It was not a lot too short, only about a millimeter or two, but it was very noticeable.  I suppose in the overall scheme of things it might not have been noticeable when the animal is put on its poll on the carousel, as I could have compensated for that, but I knew it was there.  It was just unacceptable to me.  Fortunately, I was able to rectify the situation by hot gluing on some small bits of toothpick to the bottom of the feet and then covering it with masking tape.  Once the tiger is covered with layers of paper mâché strips and clay, no one will ever know it was a problem.  The tiger now stands well balanced on its feet.

This week I will be working on covering the tiger with clay.  I have run out of the commercial paper mâché clay that I had been using for the other animals.  I wanted the tiger to look as if it had fur, so I plan to make some homemade cotton ball clay.  I have not made this before, although I had previously made some clay out of dryer lint for another project.  I have high hopes that this clay will work well in this application.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I will let you know how it works out in my next blog post.

Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next blog post.

Paper Mâché Carousel Animals - Part 6 - Tiger

Last week I was blogging on making the giraffe and about I was having trouble with its size.  I worked on it for a while and finally came to the conclusion that it was just going to be too large for this project.  I really could not even make the case for it being a baby giraffe.  Its height was going to create a problem with how high the roof of the carousel would have to be to accommodate it.  I finally decided that it was not right for this project.  

I changed plans and decided to work on a tiger instead.  I am finding that my reference material is giving me a problem.  It also seems to be much larger than it should be.  I am coming to the conclusion that the diagrams in the book may not be on scale to each other.  A tiger is big, but it should not be bigger than a horse.  So, I had to reduce the scale a little bit. 

I am still not sure I have gotten it right. This is my second attempt at getting it to the size I need it to be.  It has taken me most of the week to work on that part.  I also changed the mouth on the animal from open to closed.  This size is just too small to try to make paper mâché teeth.

I am not the greatest at math, and the math for reducing this was a bit mind boggling.  It was easier to reduce the size by switching to the metric system.  I used online conversion tables to convert inches to millimeters.  It was easier to divide using tens instead of eighths and sixteenths.  Then I had to convert the reduced number back to inches to be able to get it onto the graph paper which is in quarter inch squares that have been marked off into one-inch squares.  I think I might still be having some brain fog.

Once I had something I thought I could live with I transferred to drawing to the blue cardstock I am using for the foundation of the figures.  

There are still a few differences I have to work through to get the figures to match up a little better.  

I have just started cutting out the cardboard bracing pieces that I will use to attach the two sides of the figure together.  I will have more on how the three-dimensional figure is put together in my next blog post.  Check back next week (Monday or Tuesday) for the update.

Paper Mâché Carousel Animals - Part 5 - Giraffe

This week has been pretty busy for me, and the weather has been so nice out that I did not spend a lot of time working on my Carousel project.  I did manage to get the silhouette of the giraffe drawn, transferred to the cardstock and cut out.  

The drawings are a little dim, I guess I should have been closer when I took this photo.  Maybe it is hard to see in this picture, but the hind leg on one side is about 3/16th of an inch (about 0.92 mm if I did the math right) narrower than the other hind leg.

I did not realize that there was that much of a difference until after I cut out the silhouette and compared one to the other.  There is a little bit of a discrepancy in the belly area as well.  However, the differences are small, and I think I will be able to make them up when I start adding the paper mâché strips to the figure.  I decided not to redraw the animal.  Sometimes trying to correct just ends up making things worse.

The giraffe was a challenge because of its size.  I had planned to do all the animals at 1/8 scale.  The giraffe was so large that I had to reduce the size.  It was going to be so tall that it would cause the entire roof of the carousel to be higher.  I had to reduce its size a little bit to keep the whole piece from being something that was larger than would look well in most homes.  This is going to be a big project.

These animals are really the same size; I just did not place them well for the picture.  

So long story short, now that I have reduced the size of the animal, it looks out of proportion to the other animals.  

I have not decided yet whether or not to proceed with the giraffe and just let it be small, or to discard the giraffe for a different animal.  I will be thinking about that this week.  

Check back next week (Monday or Tuesday) for a new post on the carousel animals.