A Whale Of A Time

Yes, quite literally, I've been having a whale of a time. A 7ft 6in, according to Richard, who is a man and obviously needs to know these things precisely, whale of a time.


Why (and yes, I've asked myself this many times over the last 2 weeks)? The crêche at church are currently telling the story of Jonah and they asked, as they have this idea from somewhere that I'm 'crafty', if I had any ideas? Well, I always have ideas I'm just not sure if I should in future tell people what they are because before you know it you've volunteered to make a HUGE papier maché whale! And I've never done any papier maché before!

So where to start? Obviously first step was to search the web for 'papier maché whale'. Results? None, unless you wanted to make a little 12" 2D whale to put on the wall. The other end of the search fell in to the 'I want to make a whale as big as a house for my museum' category. Not helpful. So it was back to having to use my creativity and come up with a way to do this. The main problem was creating the framework for the papier maché to be laid onto. I briefly went down the route of 'can I find balloons big enough to support my whale sized proportions' but quickly discarded this as no, I probably couldn't. Chicken wire saved the day - and I have the scars to prove it!

After that the rest was easy, if not time consuming. The most frustrating part was waiting for it to dry between applying layers and the fact that it was a 3D object which meant covering all sides of it.

So my life this last week or so has consisted of: papier maché, dry, turn, papier maché, dry, turn, papier maché, dry ... I'm sure you get the picture.

He went down a treat though. And yes, I do mean he. It's definitely not a she - just ask Noah. He complained when I once referred to it as a she, "but mum, I'm surrounded by girls, there are already 4 in this house and only 2 boys, can it be please be a boy whale?".

Who's the 4th girl? Well that's a post for another time but I will tell you it's a hamster named Ruby.