Ok, the third, and hopefully the last, fail post (for a very long time) of the week...
Christmas break and, once again, my girls were bored. What can we do with things I have lying around the house? (Insert--me: search, girls: "no", me: search, girls: "no", me: search, girls: "no",
finally...) "How about paper mache maracas?" "YES!!"
Before I go on...I am not going to tell you how to make the maracas in this post. I'll save that for when we can re-make them and they turn out...now let's continue...
I knew we had flour, water and newspaper in the house, and I thought for sure we had some left over water balloons lying around. After looking all over the place, I could NOT find the balloons. I've got my girls all psyched up for these maracas and now we can't make them...what to do...? Hmmm...how about a sandwich bag? I'll just blow air into it, twist the top so the air can't get out, and tie it off with a twisty tie... Good idea, in theory (mistake #1).
My girls had a ton of fun playing in the paste (mistake #2) and wrapping their sandwich bags in newspaper. See the paste dots in the photo below? Take that x20. That's what our table looked like when they were done. Next time I'll put some newspaper or plastic over the table before we start.
Besides the mess, so far, so good, right? The sandwich bags were wrapped, they were holding their air, all looked good, and we set our maracas on the table to dry over night.
The next morning, the maracas were mostly dry. The girls were excited but I told them they had to wait until they dried completely before we could move on to the next steps. We left them on the table to finish drying (mistake #3).
I was in the shower and suddenly heard some loud screaming and yelling. I got out and yelled at the girls for screaming. Tottie yelled back at me, "TJ!...My maraca!" Oh, great...downstairs on the floor I discovered what the yelling was all about. The dog thought the maraca was a chew toy...
At first, it looked as though the maraca might be ok. On closer inspection...holes...lots of holes...Though the back side looked intact...
We still had one maraca intact at this point in time. We must continue this project!
Remember mistake #1 up there?...Using a sandwich bag instead of a balloon?....Yeah, this is what happened when I untied the twisty tie...a MUCH larger hole than I wanted....
And this is what happened when I tried to pull the sandwich bag out of the paper mache...
You see, the sandwich bag bag wasn't taut like a balloon. It had creases in it when we paper mached over it. I didn't think that the creases would end up
in the paper mache vs simply sliding smoothly out. So much for our maracas. Let's clean up...
In anticipation of adding a second layer of paper mache to our maracas the next day, I had put our paste in the fridge over night. Obviously we are not going to try making these again any time soon, so I needed to discard the left over paste. I knew enough not to put the paste down the drain because it was a potential drain clogger. I thought I would pour the paste into a plastic bag and then put it in the garbage...I just didn't check the bag for holes before I poured the paste into it (mistake #4)...
Yep, there you have it...my complete FAILURE at making paper mache maracas with my girls. We lived, I learned, and we'll try again...
