The Magical Moonshine Theatre

Yesterday we had some great help from Sue Brinton and Nancy Gilman.  Sue did some fine detail painting on the Lady, and worked on the torch flame (no real flames for this Lady.)  Nancy helped spruce up the Vallejos and did the final detail painting on the tablet the Lady carries.  
In the meanwhile, more and more "boat people" are signing on, meaning a flotilla of boats must be constructed and fast!  Including boats for baby carriages!  Busy, busy.

Sue paints the Lady's helmet.

Torch painting detail.  Flames are next.

Nancy gives Mariano Vallejo a manicure so he will look his best in the parade.

"Give me your tired..."   Big Thanks to Nancy and Sue.

With Valerie, Nancy, and Sue working on the "human" puppets, Michael headed off to the Mare Island Preserve Visitor Center to work on the currently headless horse, fine tuning the walking mechanism and discovering all kinds of stress points and trying to strengthen them with not enough time, and no electricity.  Today the horse gets moved to the parade route where it will wait in its "stable" until parade day.

The Solano County Fair opens tomorrow (June 23) and giant puppets Mariano and Benicia Vallejo will be there in the City of Vallejo's booth, to answer questions about the 4th of July parade and what it is like to be 10 feet tall!  Obviously the best booth at the fair!  
(to put things in perspective, the black curtain behind them is about 7 feet tall.)

Yet another day papier mache-ing (Jessie, who worked with us last year on the horse, is back, adding layers to the arms and head!)

New knowledge:  Not only does papier mache shrink when it dries, but as it shrinks over styrofoam, certain parts of the foam compress whereas others do not do so as much, so the arms that I so lovingly carved into nice rounded shapes have morphed back into to blocky shapes.  They will look fine on the puppet but are not how I envisioned them.

The Papier Mache crew goes to work on the arms and head.  Wallace (above) and Michael (left) add the SF Chronicle and Vallejo Times Herald to the lady (no NY Times here!)  It looks like my carved foam with its paper skin will work!
Meanwhile I work on the hands...always hard.

Papier Mache parts, hung out in the wind to dry.  Shown here:  an arm part and the spikes for the helmet!  The plan is to velcro on the spikes so if they happen to hit something they will velcro off rather than tear or break off...a safety release, as it were.  The work continues tomorrow!