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.
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