Cheshire cat~

I finally finished my cheshire cat for the upcoming "blog-linky" Mad Hatter's tea party that is going to be held on June the 27th. I started with balled up newspaper taped into a cat shape, the cat form is sitting on top of a foam core base. I used wooden stir sticks under each leg and the tail to keep those parts from ever falling off. I covered the form with strips of newspaper using equal parts of flour and water as the "glue" Once that was completely dried, I tore strips from a brown paper bag and used mod podge as the glue to make it a harder surface. Once that was all dry, I used paper clay to make the details in the face. (I highly recommend trying paper clay-- love it) The white areas are the paper clay. I used it on the face, feet and the tail. (I later decided the tail was tooooo fat, so I tore it apart and made it thinner)Anywho.... once the face & paws had dried, I covered the body with joint compound. I didn't want the lines from the paper showing when the cat was painted. Here is my cat covered with the joint compound-- the "worn" areas are from sanding the compound smooth. I then covered the entire thing with mod podge to seal the joint compound so it wouldn't be so easily damaged. (you can scratch that stuff easily with your finger nail)Here it is with a coat of paint... and some of the stripes that I painted on. I just used masking tape as a quide. Once everything was painted, I sprayed on some high gloss sealer to finish it up. I was wanting the look of something made with that heavy plastic like they make the rides out of at Disneyland. I think the high gloss gives it that look! The butt area ended up looking like a bullseye-- which makes me laugh-- a happy accident, so of course I had to embellish it even more.... Here is the backside all painted with a center bullseye added-- toooooooo funny~ (and yesssssss, I am a cat lover, I have 3)