Prickly Urchins--Under the Water (part 5)

This is our version.

This is Anthropologie's version.

We are still wading our way through the various projects to make this massive mural.  Hope we are still peaking your interest and inspiring you along the way.

We had two tables: one painted orange toothpicks, the other table painted purple hue toothpicks.

We dumped the painted toothpicks out to dry.  Did you know that all those toothpicks had to be separated.  Yeah, you find things out after the fact.  The next morning I separated the majority of them with tweezers.  I managed to break only one toothpick.

We managed to get eight cups of toothpicks. It's the truth. I know you only see four cups, but the rest of the toothpicks were being pulled apart.

Another test for the little ones. They were to use plastic knives to cut the styrofoam balls in half. The trick--they had to use a sawing action, in place of using brute force to break the balls in half. Oh, well..they're learning.

We had a purple and orange table again. The tricky part was not impaling fingers with toothpicks.

Now you get to see the results.

The orange ones are on the sparse side. Hmm. What to do about that?

These guys are waiting for the big reveal.

Supplies:

1. toothpicks

2. paint (your choice)

3. Styrofoam balls (size: your choice, we used medium)

4. paintbrushes

5. newspaper

6. plastic knives

7. paper bowls

Directions:

1. lay out newspaper

2. divide toothpicks into paper bowls

3. pour paint atop toothpicks

4. mix them around with the paintbrush

5. lay out painted toothpicks on newspaper to dry

6. cut Styrofoam balls in half with serrated knife (we used plastic knives)

Duration:

This was two days because of drying time