I’ve already made a lighthouse and a haunted windmill so this time I went for a derelict heater- skelter.
Using the basic hexagon tower I decided that rickety old fairground rides would need to be built with boards, so my collection of coffee stirrers got put to good use.
Rather than cut the ends neatly I measured and snapped the stirrers. To make the planks look even older and more decayed. I used a sharp craft knife (being very careful, of course) and took a few chunks out of the edges. To vary the design I made some joints and some missing and loose planks.
This was a long job and took maybe 150 planks from around 50 stirrers. I used PVA to stick them to the tower.
The top of the helter-skelter is make from Tando Creative birdcage shapes I had lurking. I cut out the centre cage bars and trimmed the top and bottom to be straight. I stuck five of them together using small hexagons as a former. The roof is made of thin card, curved to make a cone shape.
The broken slide sections are cut from Tando greyboard offcuts, with coffee stirrer sides.
I used DecoArt Modelling paste to add texture to the rotting roof. When dry it was painted black, before adding the other colours.
I painted the red diamond shapes on the tower with a diluted Santa Red, to give the patchy, peely look. The sides of the slide are in Forest Green, with Burnt Umber for the slides. The sides were aged with diluted washes of Burnt Umber and Lamp Black.
To add the mouldy, stained look I used DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics; Quinacridone Red, Paynes Grey, Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide, and Green Gold.
All finished with a distressed ‘Hell-ter Skelter’ sign.
