Thursday 19 November 2015

Paper mâché. Just don't.



I have no idea what made me think this would be a good craft to mark the Zebra turning 18 months... It certainly isn't one we will revisit until she's much older. I'm usually fine with mess and chaos but this pushed it a bit to far!!
Having not done paper mâché since I was a child, I was a bit sceptical that one part flour to one part water would be sticky enough - so I had PVA on standby. Trust me, it is sticky and gloopy enough and we didn't touch the glue.
For the paper we used the reams of junk mail catalogues sat in the recycling!
To make things a little easier, blow the ballon up just bigger than a bowl, then wedge it in so it stays upright while making 
I think the first sign that this activity was not one for the Zebra was when she refused to rip any paper strips and just wanted to stick her head in a bowl.
Things improved a bit and the Zebra got stuck into the gloop, happy to dip in the paper and lay across the ballon like I showed her.
But the Zebra soon decided she would rather play in the mixture!
It wasn't long until the Zebra had the great idea to paper mâché herself instead... At this point I gave up and quickly did as much as I could before trying to bundle her to the bathroom. 
The mixture sticks to everything. And sets hard. It particularly sets well in hair.
The creation was left to dry in the window while we went away to brighton for a week.
After popping the ballon, we was left with a flimsy, ragged and holey bowl. At least things can't get any more messy when it comes to painting the thing...
Spoke to soon. By this point I just gave up and let her go for it, even throwing the Zebra a pot of glitter to go nuts with. 
Never again.