The Elephant Project

Hallelujah! The elephant project is done! It started innocently enough, I was going to get together with another family and do a fun project. We were studing elephants they were studing Africa. I said lets make some paper mache elephants. I inquiered about building big things out of paper mache and sadly asked the wrong people first. I even reaserached things as best I could on the net before begining. I started before the person who really knew what to do got back to me. We started with chicken wire frames. The chicken wire was not as sturdy as I expected it to be. So we stuffed the frames with news paper and they got really heavy, also the legs got wobbly. So we stuck wooden picks in the legs. Than we coated the elephants with news paper and began to put mache paste on them. I learned lots of things.

Some things I learned along the way...
1, chicken wire and small kids is not a good mix
2, large structures built out of chicken wire should have a sturdier frame inside
3, small projects can easily become overwhelming (oh, wait, I already knew that one, just add ADhD to any project and it becomes TOO BIG)
4, the best way to make paper mache is to mix 1 part flour to 5 parts water, heat and stir until thick and smooth.
5, this mixture will rot if left on the counter over night
6, if it rots it smells worse than your old gym shoes that you wore all day with no socks than it rained
7, 3 gallons of rotten mache paste is really hard to dispose of (if you live in the city)
8, the best way to apply mache paste to a surface is to brush it onto newspaper and than stick it to the object
9, its a good idea to let 3 coats dry overnight before attempting to add more

Pictures of the process can be seen here.
This posting word program sucks! Where did I put that HTML book???