Giant Mushroom Tutorial

MUSHROOM TIME!

I found this website here that told me a rough out line of how to make the mushrooms. It took her 3 months to make 4. It's taken me 2 days to get to the end of the paper mache part so time varies. I've made 2 mushrooms. One that is 4ft tall and another that is 6 feet.

Materials Needed:

Chicken Wire

Walmart Jewelry Wire

Pliers

Wire Cutters

Something to mark the wire

I made a wire "stalk" or "stem" out of chicken wire to start with. I basically rolled out chicken wire (still curled) and measure out how thick I wanted my stem to be then cut . I tied the ends together with walmart jewelry wire (try to get the thickest wire). I then decided how tall I wanted my mushroom. I had purchased 2ft x 25ft of chicken wire and stacked two cylinders of chicken wire on top of each other to create a 4ft stem. I then worked on the cap. Which to me is by far the hardest part but it wasn't the part that cut me the most (Wear gloves to avoid cuts). I flattened out the chicken wire and marked a circle with little torn pieces of foam stickers(: You could probably use any type of thing to mark. I tried Sharpie at first and it didn't show up on the metal.

To make the curved part of the mushroom cap I had to cut it out special so when I combined the edges it would make a dome shape. I found this lovely image on another website which helped me AMAZINGLY!

I chose the bottom image. And marked out the shape in the middle. I then started to cut out my circle and the inside shape. It turned out looking cool! I then combined it with jewelry wire that I got at Walmart. It comes in a huge spool of it. (Purchase the thickest wire). I made the shape nad slightly overlapped the wires. And tied it together and tried to tie the ends sticking out to the wires around it. It did create a lovely mushroom shape.

To fix the pointed ends of the cap I duck taped each end then to make a solid line of the mushroom I connected them with strips of duct tape that I folded in half over the edge.

I then started to paper mache! The cap was the easiest to paper mache. The stem on the other hand wasn't so. The paper mache didn't like to stick to the metal so half way through the stem I put masking tape down the sides for the paper mache to sticks to. This worked tons better! The paper mache recipe I used was amazing too. It's very thick and easy to use. 

Paper Mache Recipe:

Boil 2 cups of water on the stove. In a separate bowl combine 1/2 cup of white flour and 2 cups water. When the water on the stove has come to a boil. Pour in the mixture. Mix until there are no lumps in it and then let the mixture come to a boil again. Take the mixture off heat when at a boil and put in 3 tablespoons sugar and mix. Let it cool and the mixture will thicken.

Here's the mushroom pieces after I paper mache'd them.