Paper-mache Elephant

Hey there! So, there was a homeschool art show (or something like that) that some friends and I participated in recently, and I wanted to share one of my projects that I made for it. 

In addition to a crochet doll, and a painting, I happened to make a large paper mache elephant. Don't ask me how on earth I got the idea to do this..it just happened. And believe it or not, I found a few other blogs where people made elephants just like this one. So, I don't know if this is a tutorial or a "look what I did" kind of thing. Either way, enjoy!

The first thing I did was take some pieces of cardboard that I happened to have lying around (crafters tend to hoard things like that. Or maybe it's just me). And I cut out the shape of the elephants body and legs. As you can see from the two pictures below, I cut the body and all four legs separately, and then attached them using a thick piece of cardboard. (this doesn't make sense, but I think the pictures really help explain it).

*Also cut out a tail, ears, and tusks (optional, depending on if it's a boy or girl elephant) and set those aside. We won't attach those until after we paint the rest of elephant.

You want to use the card board to separate the legs, like below, so that you can stuff around the body and give it shape. I used a hot glue gun to attach them.
*Note, you can also use wood for the base if you need it to be more sturdy.

Then, I started stuffing. Everything I saw used newspaper, but I didn't have THAT much newspaper on hand, so I used grocery bags. We have, I mean, had a ton of grocery bags.
So, whether you use grocery bags, stuffing, newspaper, or anything else, you'll use the same technique. With my bags, I squished them really tight and taped them down. I ended up, at the end, taking a bag and covering sections of it (as you can see I covered the back/side of it with one bag, and the head with another, and each of the legs in one as well). This just gave it a smoother surface when I paper-mached over it.

I didn't have the opportunity to take any picture while I was paper-macheing it, but here it is after it dried! (As you can see I started to paint a little bit of it). The paper-mache process took a couple of days, because I ran out of flour. It was difficult to get it in the bottom, like the stomach area and between the legs (not to sound awkward, but you know what I mean). I just kept putting layers on until I was satisfied.

Then I started painting! I mixed white, black, and a little bit of blue together to get the color I wanted. I ran out of white paint so this took several days to finish, because I couldn't get to the store right away. It also took several coats to cover everything.

Now, while I was painting the elephant's body I also painted the ears and tail and set them aside. Once the elephant was dry, I attached them using the hot glue gun.

Then I started on the final details! Here you see the wonderful little feet.

And the eyes. Well, you can only see one in the picture, but you get the picture.

I wanted to add some decorations on the elephant, so I put some lovely floral designs on the trunk and ears.

And I made sure to leave a whole in the tail so I could tie some yarn for a cute little fluffy thing at the bottom.

Had to take a selfie somewhere in there...

And wa-la! Here's the finished product. 

Thanks for reading along! Let me now if you have any questions. 

Faith