Papier Macheniacs: Kadayawan Festival!

4 months?! Seriously?! Have I been away that long???
Well, there's good reason for that. We haven't been doing much papermacheing unless it was for some event. And this was a huge event. Linggo ng Wika representing Davao's Kadayawan Festival!

The Kadayawan Festival celebrates all things bountiful. A bountiful harvest, a bountiful business, a bountiful life --which Davaoenos visualize with strings of beads hanging from colorful masks and elaborate headpieces. Kindla like this one.

Mind you, this was noy my original design. This was.

I had wanted a do-rag kinda thing with bead attachments. But as luck would have it, I got a fabric that was way too thick to fold. And I was pressed for time so I just had to do with it what I can. *sigh* I think it still turned out great in the end. Although as a piece of advice for all you crafters: Always make sure you have the right materials with you beforehand. Don't get stuff at the last minute. *lesson learned*

Okay, onto the dangling beads! Well, you know I'd like to do those by hand and I wanted to give the visual representation of the Filipino capiz. I went to town with a few sheets of cardboard for that.

Papermache'd them, as per yoosh.

And painted them in Davao's favorite festive colors. These colors represent vegetables and fruits and nature.

You can see the colors better here. :P

We strung them all up with tie-dyed yarn to create fun danglers. We weighed them down with clipped on coins so that the yarn would stay stretched. Brilliant brain fart there, eh? Haha!

We attached them to the freshly-painted on headpiece. Of course, we made the necklaces, too. It was fun painting the bigger 'capiz' pieces.

Oh! I made two designs for the headpiece paint job, by the way. Both designs also come from patterns most commonly used in the Kadayawan Festival.

And here they are worn by my boys. I think the tie-dyed shirts made a great match to these hyper colorful papermache'd pieces. Howeverrrr... my boys weren't too pleased that the headpieces didn't turn out to be do-rags as planned. *sigh*

Here they are again after I forced them to be happy about their miscalculated headpieces anyway. Mwahahaha!

So that's it!
Will I post in Halloween? Nobody knows. :D

Papier Macheniacs: From Grocery Bag to Tribal Headdress

Yay! One more week to go and it's summer vacation already! Yesssss!!!

But before I prematurely bask into that relaxed feeling, allow me to stress myself out first with a Year-end Celebration costume creation for my boys' final 2019 school event.

The school will be having a musical that focuses on Filipino culture. Dude, that means tribalwear. Uh-huh. Right in my park, baybeeeh!
The boys are assigned to be Ifugao warriors and I'm just over the moon with that. The school will be providing the basic costume so all I have to do is fashion some kind of tribal headdress for them. Of course, for the Papier Macheniacs team, that means another bout of fun recycling in order to create --THESE!

And believe it or not, these headresses used to be recyclable grocery bags. Yep. I kid you not. I would've gone full on paper mache like I always do for headdresses, but the teachers wanted the costumes to be kept in the kids' lockers for dress rehearsals. So I needed a material that wouldn't bend and break when shoved in a locker full of books and gym socks. So grocery bags it is --with the most tribal-ish designs on them, too. Shout out to SM Markets for making my life so much easier! *mwah*

So what I did was fold the grocery bag so that the design comes up as the focal point and then measured my boys' skulls so that I can cut the recyclable fabric to the right length. I sewed on the sides to keep the material neat and sturdy.

Then, I conned the neighbor to give me her old feather duster. Would you believe she even wanted me to pay for the dusty old thing? Lol! I painstakingly paper mache'd each feather onto the fabric.

I also paper mache'd a couple of skulls --a bird's and a shrunken head's. Because I'm going for THAT kind of warrior. Haha!

I added a dash of fabric paint and --HEY, YEAH! WE GOT TRIBAL HEADDRESSES!

See how easy that was? And I didn't even spend a single cent. Mwahahaha!

If you want to create your own tribal headdress for whatever reason, feel free to do what we did. Recycle. Your grocery bag will thank you for its new purpose in life.
Happy paper mache-ing!

Papier Macheniacs: Benguet Strawberry Festival Masks

Buwan ng Wika.
A celebration of our language and culture.
And an ideal time to get cosplay crafting!
PAPIER MACHENIACS --ACTIVATE!

This year, the school assigned the Benguet Strawberry Festival as the theme for my boys' class. And because I was so sure every kid will be coming in Benguet native attire (read: red and black weaved cloth), I knew I had to push my boys gear up a notch. Naturally, that meant making strawberry masks! Creepily fruity, huh! :P

We found these eerie Jason canvas cloth masks at National Book Store and I just went nuts with glee!

Post haste, I went down to making paper mache leaves --which, by the way, was a very therapeutic exercise.

Can I be a dingus and tell you now that I totally forgot to take a picture of the freshly paper mache'd masks? Ugh. It was past midnight. I was working against the clock. Still, that's no excuse, you pathetic blogger! *whimpers*

Slathered the masks with red and green paint, complete with white teardrop details --and BOOM! We got strawberry masks!

I am extra proud of the leaf details!

Made tiny strawberries for necklace embellishments to complete the look, too.

And there you have it!
I was informed that my boys spent most of the school celebration sneaking up on people and scaring them with killer strawberry delight. So I guess that means this project's a success! :)

HAPPY BUWAN NG WIKA, GUYS! See you with more of these insane crafts next year!

Papier Macheniacs: Lemon-Scented Infinity Gauntlet

Wow. Another late post. We finished this project like ages ago. Ugh.

Okay, enough whining. Bottomline is that we did something awesome and seriously went nuts with gold! Man, Thanos can be so tacky. lol!

So, the boys wanted to make their very own Infinity Gauntlet. And with how much that thing costs at Toys R Us, I'm just happy they decided to go the creative route on this. The caveat though is that they wanted the Gauntlet to be wearable. As in they wanted to actually move their fingers and possibly do the snap to end all life on earth or something like that. I'm down for that. I love a death-defying challenge.

That meant I couldn't do a full-on paper mache on the Gauntlet. I needed a flexible base that can carry paper and glue, and yes, stones. We needed a glove.

And here it is. Haha. Okay, okay... it's a lame lemon-scented dishwashing glove. It's all I got, alright?! Oh, look at it snapping!

 

With a huge amount of self-doubt, we managed to slather the thing with tissue paper and glue, about 3 coats so it stays sturdy. But again, we needed to keep the thing flexible so we made sure to avoid covering up the finger joint areas and the wrist.

After leaving it to dry overnight, we went on ahead and spilled a ton of gold on it. Oh, and precious stones! Yes, yes... I do realize that we only had green crystals. That's like Thanos binging on the Time Stone. We'll just paint over them later.

There you go! Not too shabby!
We used a combination of gold and brown paint just to give the design dimension. More dimension happened when we used rope as the base of each stone. It was all a matter of sticking the rope around each stone with glue and painting them.

Body detail was a load of fun! Especially since we didn't cover the whole glove so there was a lot of paper mache play that went into the design.

TA-DAH! In full use and moving! Perfect for murderous snapping...

And nose-picking, apparently.

The best part: It still smelled like lemon! FRESH!

If you want to make your own Infinity Gauntlet, just follow the steps I've outlined here. Dishwashing gloves are available in a variety of fruity scents. :)

Papier Macheniacs: Quick Warrior Armor

Another occasion, another costume.
This time, it's United Nations Day. And I am pissed that I didn't have enough time to do this. :(
You see the boys were representing Korea. And naturally, they totally bashed my suggestion that they go to the school event as colored-hair Kpop idols. Yeah, I have the lamest suggestions sometimes. My boys wanted to come as ancient Korean warriors. Yeah, why not? Kill me with that, huh?
I never back out of a challenge, so yeah --bring it!

Just in case you're tasked into making a warrior costume for your child under short notice, here's a short cut that I personally think still worked.

Just hunt for a huge box and fashion sleeveless shirts out of each side. These cardboard pieces are your warrior armor foundation so a lot of measuring is in order. Add texture.

Paper mache through the night. Only one layer will do if you're using a cardboard box of the hell-sturdy kind.

Add gold or silver paint for a metal finish and shoe laces to tie the two boards together. Kinda like a sandwich board at your favorite deli.

Throw in a quick paper mache head piece and you're set!

Honestly, I would've wanted to make shoulder and arm plates as well. :( But sometimes, a Papier Macheniac isn't given that luxury of time to go full-on.*le sigh*

Still happy how that armor turned out though. :)

Paper Macheniacs: PINTADOS!

Buwan ng Wika.
An entire month dedicated to celebrating the beauty and depth of the Fiipino language. It's myriad of dialects. And the culture that ties its more than 2,000 islands together in solidarity and love.

It's also that month when we get down to costume-making. Hey-yeah!

This year, the boys came to their school's Linggo ng Wika event as the Pintados of Leyte. A little backgrounder: the Pintados were warriors of this region, distinct for their body art that covered them from head to toe. Each tattoo showcases the accomplishment of the warrior. The more tattoos, the more the warrior is revered. And, boy, did I got to town inking!

I got two tight-fitting long-sleeved shirts and a bunch of markers and let loose with the nature and tribal art. No rhyme or reason. If I'd really put my boys' accomplishments on there, the shirts would have a drum set and archery gear which don't really look that good as tattoos. I mean, duh.

But wait --this is a Paper Macheniacs post, isn't it? Where's the darn arts and crafts?!!

Right here. the husband did the accessories and he can be quite as rabid as I am when inspired. So these paper mache'd head pieces and jewelry happened --complete with aquarium pebbles, shoe laces, and bristles from my trusty broom.

My dish rags were thrown into the ensemble, too.

And there you have it --PINTADOS!

Oh, did I tell you that I inked the pants, too?

Like I always say, 'Do it crazy or don't do it at all'. :)

Papier Macheniacs: PINGU!

Okay, okay... so June had been a busy summer month. But, as dedicated as we are, we still managed to squeeze in a couple of paper mache projects. You know about the land formation project, right? Yeeeah... I'm just gonna have to assume that you read that blogpost. Other than that, we also had our little Pingu project.

Hey, you know Pingu --that adorably naughty claymation penguin on TV? He was one of the most popular TV characters in this household. Well, back when we still watched TV. Now it's just all about Markiplier on YouTube.
But I digress. My kids decided to pay homage to their past fave so we did a little crafting.

You know the drill, re-use and recycle. Other than the usual glue and tissue paper, we never buy anything when crafting. The point is to always make something new and awesome out of something that other people may deem as junk. For example, this old Christmas tree silver ball ornament and this empty bottle of Vitamins. Just tape cardboard around these items until you get the shape you want. Before you know it --BOOM!-- the beginnings of an arctic flightless bird! I'm sure it looks like a tired astronaut right now, but give me a minute here.

We mummified the shape with glue and tissue paper. Basically, paper macheing the figure to hard, smooth goodness.

Then, we added the details. Alright, I added the details. Isn't it crazy how I went over the eyeball outlines like a thousand times?!! Ugh. Thank God that mess will be painted over. But still, Pingu looks more like a monkey here, doesn't he? Double ugh.

PAINTED!

This deserves a back story. We ran out of black poster color. BLACK. The single most important color on Pingu's body. Because patience isn't exactly our strongest suit, we went to the neighbor --who incidentally fixes cars for a living-- and got some left over paint. We're talking car paint. The kind you put on metal surfaces.
So yeeeeah... that's how our Pingu got that brilliant shine. Uh-huh, this Pingu won't need to bob sled himself over ice bergs. He can just glide over frosty slopes on his shiny tummy. Hehe.

Okay, okay, I'm done.
That's Pingu for ya! If you want to make your own Pingu or any other old TV show character to immortalize some glorious childhood memory --paper mache it!