Paper Mache - The Devil's Art Form

It's book fair time once again.  The theme this fall is Monsters.  Cutesy-monsters for the elementary schools but we're going with Classic Monsters.  Wolfman, Mummy, Frankenstein, etc.  And of course, Aliens.  That's a stretch, I know but finally a chance to use my Chest-Burster and Face Hugger! I immediately offered to make Alien Eggs out of Paper Mache.

(And a mummy sarcophagus but that's another story.  Suffice it to say, you can make an awesome sarcophagus out of three cardboard boxes, one x-acto knife and a butt-load of packing tape.The only difficulty is deciding whether to get help from:

a 13 year old boy:
Me, "Can you hold it right here?"
Me, "Tom, can you hold it right here?"
Me, "TOM!"
Tom, "Huh?"
<sigh>

or a grown-up engineer:
John, "You need to overlap the cardboard to make it more stable."
Me, "I don't want to overlap it. This is the top and I want a smooth surface to paint."
John, "words words words, structural integrity, words words words words, sheer force, words words words, tensile strength, words words words words words, algorithms and math shit words words"
<sigh>)

But back to the alien eggs...Before I got started, someone, who I assumed was my friend, told me that it's much easier to use cheese cloth and fabric stiffener so I thought I give that a shot.

I found a 6-pack of giant balloons. The package only contained 5, fine, whatever. I planned on making three eggs so that left a two extra.  One immediately disappeared into Sam-the-Magpie's nest, never to been seen again. I was down to 4; that left one in case something went wrong but come on, what could possibly go wrong. First thing I learned about fabric stiffener? It's a mess. And I'm pretty sure I watered it down too much so it was a huge-fucking-mess. It was everywhere; all over my hands and arms, dripping all over the garage floor, running down the balloon into a puddly mess, and splattered against every vertical surface.  But it only need one layer of cheese cloth so it went rather quickly.  Tom helped hold the balloons still because as I found out next, round things roll.

The whole experience took about half an hour and went something like this:
(Mom, you should stop reading now.)
fuck
fuckfuckfuck
jesusfuckingchrist
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCKfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUUUUUUUUCK
that woman is NOT my friend!

I decided that two eggs were quite enough. At least they looked good. Really good, actually.  Ripply and very organic looking. Until the balloons started to slowly leak. And contract. Pulling the stiffened fabric with them. Well, fuck. Now I have scrambled eggs.

John, "I think you can still use them"
Me, "mmpwhhh"
John, "No, really, I think they look cool"
Me, "I really need you to go away"

Here's a picture of the second one. I don't have a picture of the first one because I threw it against the wall.

Nailed it!

I left John standing in the garage as I stomped into the house, swearing and slamming doors. Did I mention that what makes me so good at these types of projects is my even-headedness and mellow nature? After about 20 minutes I calmed down and decided try regular old paper-mache.

Me, "Can you google paper mache? What are the proportions?"
John, "You need to make it on the stove."
Me, "What?! You Do Not need to COOK paper mache."
John, "Well, all of these say you have to make it on the stove."
Me, "You don't have to cook it! The last time I paper mache'd, I was in 3rd grade, in a army school, in Korea! We didn't cook shit!  We were in a fucking quonset-hut! See, this is the problem with the mothers of today. Why do something in 3 steps when you can do it in 12? Everything has to be as complicated as pos..."
John,"Wait, I found one that doesn't need the stove."

Armed with a stack of newspapers and a bucket of flour/water, we went back into the garage to give it another shot.  This one went much smoother. It was still a mess and now there was paper-mache all over the floor, mixed with the fabric stiffener and traces of cheese cloth and newspaper and the diet coke that I accidentally kick over and a rock solid beach towel that I used to wipe up the diet coke that also soaked up some of the fabric stiffener and was now stuck to the floor. My arms were coated, so were my legs and feet. There were globs of it in my hair. John made lots of helpful suggestions and tried to get me to stop swearing and I didn't even threaten to divorce him.  I'm a fucking saint.

Here are my alien eggs:

P.S.  My right flip-flop is 'stiffened' to the garage floor where it will remain for all time.  It will be disclosed to the new owners as "Fine Art - Man's struggle to move Forward only to get Buggered in the Garage"

P.S.S. When John got home from work, he took one look at the "cleaned" up garage and said, "It looks like someone shot an elephant porno in there. There's hard white crusty shit everywhere! I think  it's on the ceiling!"

Happy Fucking Halloween!