Umbrella Mushrooms & Eight Foot Checkerboards

We are thinking big in my art room these days. My set design class has been making the backdrops for our "Alice in Wonderland" themed prom. We went through a lot of painter's tape to make a checkerboard pattern on two white and two black 8'X4' pieces of birch.

Then, some of my daily art students and I took a couple of broken umbrellas and turned them into giant mushrooms. For the base, we poured cement into coffee cans and stood giant cardboard tubes in them. The umbrellas were inserted into the tops of tubes and from the bottom of the cans to the top of the umbrella handles were wrapped in big cardboard to give it the shape of a mushroom stem.

In order to change the shape of the umbrella top, we kept taping mounds of newspaper to the top, and trying to add poster board to the edges.

 Then we spent a couple of days with papier-mâché. Using strips of newspaper dipped in either fabric starch or a flour-water mixture.  We painted the mushrooms  tan with house paint and finally, we dusted with pink (or blue) and gold spray paint. Prom is still more than a month away, but we've got more ideas and projects to do.