Saturday, December 18, 2010

Making a Cave

Need a cave for your nativity set?  Here was our solution.
2 sheets of foam core board

roughly sketched cliff lines

a box cutter and a very sore arm

lots of elm*r's glue


paint (okay, so the paint job is incomplete, but we need these for tomorrow morning in Sunday School, so they will do until next week when I can do a better job :)

add a few figures, and we are good to go! 
(I did NOT paint the beautiful figures, an artist friend from church painted them for us!)

I like the cave so much, I may do one for our home nativity set, since these must go live at church now.  Interested in how they will be used?  Next week I will share all about the beautiful transformation that has occurred in childrens' religious education at our church since August.

8 comments:

Matushka Anna said...

Oh I LOVE it!! How creative! I think I'll have to make one next year. Thanks so much!

magda said...

I liked seeing the photos of the transformation, and I'm very much looking forward to next week's post!

Cassc said...

Very cool. I tried to make one a few weeks ago using clay. Let's just say I can't post in polite company what one child told me it looked like! I'm going to have to give this a try.

elizabeth said...

How neat!! good job!!

Anastasia said...

Lovely. Can you describe how you made the figures too? Thanks.

Anna said...

Anastasia - the figures were made out of paper clay as well. We started with 1/2 inch wooden dowels cut to about 4 inch lengths, then molded the clay around that. It was a group effort, with a dozen women all helping make one or more figures (we needed two full sets). After the shape is where you want it (or as good as it's going to get :) you let them dry, sand them and patch any cracks etc. Then I painted them with gesso and handed them over to our talented artist to paint them. None of us were convinced they would be worth using until we saw them painted, at which point we were all thrilles!

vicki said...

These are beautiful! I was inspired to make a Resurrection set from this idea...made a tomb by making the opeing smaller and using the hole scraps to make a stone! Thanks for the inspiration!

Anna said...

vicki - great idea! I would love to see what you did :) we have to create a tomb for catechesis next year, thankfully not this Lent though!