Make A Paper Mache Snow Man

Yesterday the kids and I were so excited about the snow! They played in it for a while and I helped them build a snowman! He turned out pretty good! When it was time to come in I went surfing to find a fun snowman craft to do with the kids. I found this really cute paper mache snowman! I got it at: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/winter/papermache_snowman.htm. Parts of it were a little challenging for my 5 year old and I ended up having to do more of it than I bargained for! But in the end it turned out pretty good without too much headache! I'm writing my own version of the directions because the ones I found left a lot out that was important if you've never none paper mache before.....like me!

I'll give some short directions first, for people who've already done this kind of thing and then I'll give the long winded ones for people like me, who are a little craft-challenged!

Craft Whiz Directions

• Blow up 3 balloons of 3 different sizes.
  
• Make paper mache (I followed the recipe given; 4 cups water 1 cup flour whisked on heat until thickened and then poured into another bowl, adding 4 ice cubes.)
  
• Coat each balloon separately with newspaper. Let it dry.
  
• Tape the sections together in snowman fashion. And then cover entire snowman with another layer of paper. White paper is best so you don't have to paint him later.
  
• Let dry and then decorate it with construction paper, beads, pebbles, or whatever you can find.>

Craft-Challenged Directions

1. Blow up 3 round balloons 3 different sizes, appropriate for making a snow man.
   
2. Whisk 4 cups of cold water with 1 cup of flour in a pan. Continue to whisk while heating until it thickens.
   
3. Put the flour/water mixture in an other bowl with 4 ice cubes and stir until no longer piping hot!
   
4. Tear up strips of newspaper. This is a great part for the little ones to help with! (We had an easier time with bigger sections of newspaper rather than the strips for some reason.)
   
5. Dip the ripped paper, one or two at a time into the flour/water mixture (you can use your fingers to kinda squeegee some of the excess sticky stuff off so it's not so drippy).
   
6. Lay the balloon in a bowl and begin laying and overlapping the strips (or sections) of newspaper. (We did ours without a bowl and that didn't work so well!)
   
7. Continue covering the balloon by overlapping the papers.
   
8. Do this to all three balloons. Let them dry overnight. Save the flour/water mixture.
   
9. Tear up more strips of paper. (If you use white paper you won't have to paint it when you're done. We used white paper.)
   
10. Use masking tape to connect the balloons together, snowman fashion! (This was slightly difficult. We ended up cutting the bottom of the circles out so it would stand upright and so they would stack on top of each other better. It was still tricky taping them together!)


11. Use the flour/water mixture you saved and the white paper and layer the entire snow man, being careful where each different snowman section comes together. Make sure you overlap the pieces from section to section so it will hold together well. (Be careful also at this point because the paper mache becomes a little soft when it gets wet with the new layer. It can cave in and it's hard to get it back out!)
    
12. Let it dry again. Then decorate him or her with construction paper or beads or pebbles or whatever you have around that is worthy!



Here is how ours turned out. Let me know what you think!