James and the Giant Peach

Did you ever start a project you wish you hadn't? Hmmm, me too!
It seemed like a good idea at the time: my youngest son was off school with asthma, we had just finished Roald Dahl's magnificent "James and the Giant Peach" and Herbie had done this rather fabulous drawing to illustrate it...

(I love the way kids draw, don't you? Like the wiggly line that is the sea)

Anyway, I got to thinking how it would be really cool to make a model from paper mache - a mobile perhaps that could hang in their bedroom - of the peach being carried along by some seagulls. Ambitious,perhaps, but the boys were very eager!

We started on the gulls first - and following a happy accident (I wanted cardboard, and toilet rolls were the first thing to hand....how very Blue Peter!) realised a very simple seagull shape could be made using two pieces sellotaped together (the larger piece is simply folded under the bird's body)



..or folded above it in this example.

Then, using PVA glue as an adhesive, we covered the cardboard shapes in newspaper to make them sturdier.

And painted them with acrylic paint. I like the way the newsprint shows through!

Now for the peach itself!
Unfortunately the photos I took were too dark to document this part properly, but we covered the most part of a balloon with PVA and several layers of paper (letting it dry before applying the next layer) We left a hole at the top, simply because a peach isn't balloon-shaped, it needed to be more rounded than that. So we left a section at the top of the balloon uncovered, and when the paper mache was dry, and the balloon had deflated, I used long strips of newspaper to cover the hole. Another happy accident ensued: the soggy strips sagged in the middle - which turned out to be a more realistic shape than I was aiming for!
The sunken part would be where the stem would go!

Here's what it looked like painted!

I used a stick for the stem, there was a nobbly bit (technical term) protruding from the bottom of it, so I pushed it right into the paper mache and the branch bit (pointing upwards) prevented the stick from falling out.

Next problem, how to fix it all together! If you are familiar with the story, you will know that the birds carry the giant peach along with spider silk, but I needed something a bit sturdier than that, so I used wire. I stuck one end of a piece of wire into the cardboard gull, and wrapped the other around the stem of the peach. I could then move the birds into position quite easily.


Finally (I'm exhausted just writing this up!) the whole thing was suspended using lightweight jewellery wire.

TA-DA!!!!

The peach is complete!