Cardboard Cave

For our Stake Teen Elect activity, I volunteered to come up with a cardboard decoration of some kind.   The theme was "Even A Caveman Can Do It."  As I have previously mentioned, I love to make stuff out of cardboard!  I found the perfect large flat pieces of cardboard at Costco, that were used to separate levels of items stacked on pallets.  I asked an employee if they were free for the taking.

Yep, free.  My favorite word.  I brought home two and cut a cave opening section out.  Then, I took the cut out cardboard pieces and placed them on the top for a rounded boulder effect, see the 4 cut-out sections below.  The puzzle pieces worked together almost perfectly, with just a little rounding on the edges. Next I taped the pieces together really well with packing tape.

The fourth piece at top left not yet in place

All the pieces together and ready to tape

Next, I wadded up newspapers and taped it on to make a jagged rock effect.  Not a pretty sight, but ultimately it is just to create volume and lumpy rock shapes.

Now it gets sloppy.  I made a big bowl of paper mache goop.  I don't have a recipe for this, I just add the ingredients until it is the right consistency.  I bet you could find oodles of recipes through google.  I used water, Elmer's glue, and flour to make a liquidy paste.  Next, I ripped strips of newspapers and dipped them one at a time into the goop.  I needed it to dry fast, so I squeezed off most of the liquid before placing the strips as flat as possible over the wadded newspaper...

fancy stuff, right?  I let it dry for about 3 hours, then enlisted Berkley's help.  Armed with 4 almost-empty cans of spray paint, and one brand new can of textured stone spray paint... we attacked the cardboard and completed the transformation.

Berkley doing a final inspection before we painted

The painting is finished... next I taped some boards up the back on each side for some extra support, and we duct taped it to two stacks of chairs  to hold it up.  A couple strands of vines were stapled on, and the ring of rocks in front of it finished off the look.

The only item I purchased was the textured stone spray paint from Walmart for $7.97... someone else bought the vines so I don't know the price on those.

We still have two more evenings of Teen Elect, I will post more about the activity when it is finished.