jen, miles and i made these papier mache planets for connor's first birthday party. jen found the instructions online and they sounded easy enough. blow up a balloon, paper mache, paint, done. easy. ugh yeah. these little planets ended up taking us a whole week to make. they were not hard to make they just took forever.
we blew up balloons in various sizes for the eight planets and then coated them with a layer of papier mache. we used flour and water as our paste and dipped cut newspaper into it. this part of the project was so so messy. just yuck all over. jen quickly proclaimed after the first layer that this was not the craft for her. it was easy enough except you had to let them dry and then do two more coats. three coats in all. the fact that it was raining outside did not help us. it was taking a very long time for them to dry. we had to let them sit near the oven over night. i would turn the oven on to let it warm up and then turn it off and put the balloons near it. they still had to sit over night between each coat. finally it was time to paint. miles did the painting. he would paint a solid coat and then go back with a sponge brush for detail. he got a little carried away with earth. i didn't think we actually needed all the continents painted. hmmmm. finally the whole thing was coated with a spray satin finish. and threaded with fishing wire to hang. they look great and it was a pretty inexpensive project but really, i could have just bought inflatable planets for $20.00 and saved myself a week of work and mess.
unless you have lots of time and love to make a mess while crafting i would say skip this project and just buy some planets instead.
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