The Gup-A has been launched!

I finally finished the Gup-A over the weekend much to Caelan's delight!

This is your standard paper mache onto a balloon, actually a water bomb! A local paper, a pepsi lid, a couple of icypole sticks and a gold pipe cleaner from christmas wrapping left overs was all it took. Oh, and a rubber band attached to the propeller so you can wind it up and it spins! It doesn't always work right but my engineering skills are improving!!
I also collected a heap of images online and printed out a couple of pages full of Octonauts characters and logos which I use to 'embellish' the gups. I'd originally printed the octo-alert logo on clear printer labels but they didn't stick well and apparently didn't taste too good either! Thanks Aedan!
The paper cut-outs glued on perfectly and look much better than the stickers. We'll use them for some other crafty projects for the boys too as they both love cutting and pasting!
We actually used some of these cutouts to make basic 'puppets' stuck onto icypole sticks and I was treated to a brief puppet show this evening!

I also began work over the weekend on Caelan's Easter bonnet for a parade at kinder on Friday.Of course it's not remotely bonnety, that was never gonna happen! We've made rabbit ears, but more specifically, Tweak Bunny ears ! (You may recall my earlier post when I mentioned this is the Octonauts character Caelan has cast me as!!)  They're not the typical fluffy ears I'd usually do for the easter bunny, they're slender and green but they'll get Caelan more excited about joining in with the parade this way!!!  I'll add a pic here tomorrow of the kinder parade to show the hat- I need to stick some easter eggs on it for Caelan tonight... If I'd done that earlier the eggs would be gone by now!
Edited to add:

( I was very proud of his enthusiasm to participate and his ears stood out amongst the sea of cotton wool and straw that adorned most other hats! Actually his ears had a nice sort of rubbery bounce to them as he walked and the eggs sparkled in the sunshine! )

I used the same blue foam that their octonauts hats are made with. It's about 5mm thick, is quite dense but soft and has a plasticky layer on one side. My husband gets off-cuts of this stuff from work he does installing gyms.I've also used it in the past for kangaroo and platypus costumes i made for a musical I directed! It glues together well with a hot-glue gun. The joins go quite hard but it sets quickly and won't fall apart so I haven't actually bothered trying other glues. The Octonauts hats though are just taped together with a heavy-duty packing tape with a string weave through it. Plain clear tape just didn't stick as well and I thought we can remove the tape and add elastic to the back if the boys grow out of them but still want them to fit, tape will make that easier.
I've spray painted and brushed paint onto this foam in the past. The acrylic paints crack a bit after a few days of songs and dances on stage. But I had a better colour range to use compared to my enamel spray paints and was on a tight budget then too...
Anyway, For the Easter bunn, errrm I mean Tweak ears, I used some polyester wadding to make a 'bunny' tail which Caelan then used as a 'sponge' to paint the ears with a mix of acrylic and poster paints. The paint will crack & come off unfortunately, especially when the easter eggs get pulled off, but we'll be able to salvage the ears to still be a Tweak hat once Easter is over and maybe repaint with some new spray paint. Spray enamels are really the best choice for this foam I think, but I wanted to stick to using stuff I had already, rather than forking out for spray paint. I'm really trying to recycle as much as possible and keep any purchases I need to make for these projects to a minimum.

Today I've started on the Gup-D. A manta ray that can turn into a crab. I've used a laughing cow cheese box,   some of the pointy bits from inside an egg carton and some bits of plastic packaging from drink bottles to make the armature and have covered it in a few layers of the Sunday paper. I'm hoping to do some touchups on those layers tomorrow then paint it on the weekend.

I will continue to post photos upon completion :)
off to stick eggs on a hat now......