Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Mika's Peeps Diorama 2012

When Mika heard about the library's peeps diorama contest, she was instantly interested.  The contest required that you depict a scene from a book using at least one peep.  The diorama should be approximately shoe box size.

After some thought, she decided to do a scene from The Hunger Games (as did three other entrants).  Considering several options, she chose the scene in which Katniss nearly steps on the camouflaged Peeta.  Since she's never done anything like this, I provided some suggestions and guidance, but she did nearly all of the work.


Because this was an outdoor scene, I suggested she use natural materials.  We came up with this idea of using twigs as tree trunks and building trees using bits of fir branches built up with diorama ground cover.  It worked quite well.


Here's Mika adding in more trees.


Once the forest was finished, she added Peeta, painted in a river, and started gluing down sand for the ground cover.  As she went along, she also glued down pebbles, larger rocks, bits of small sticks, fir needles, and bits of an old wasp nest we had.  She gradually built up a nice layer of materials, making it look convincing.


In order to camouflage Peeta, she painted him with the same sand as the ground.  Then she laid some rocks near his head and painted both the rocks and his ears to match.  Then she added ground cover, moss from our yard and pebbles to hide his body.  He was nearly impossible to spot at this point.


After finishing Peeta, she added googly eyes for humor and to help point him out.  She also added a conversation bubble containing the quote from the scene in the book.  She made Katniss and added her to the diorama.


Here is a side view of Katniss.  She used a bit of gold-colored twist tie to make a mockingjay pin.  The bow is a piece of memory wire from her stash for making bracelets.  The string is just thread super-glued on.  Her hair is some braided yarn, and her clothing is cut from some old yoga pants and glued on.


Here's more detail of Katniss.  She has an orange backpack.  I was experimenting with ideas of how to make a tiny backpack, and it worked well enough that we just went with that idea.  It's made with a bit of paper towel, colored with Crayola marker, glued together, and stuffed with another bit of paper towel.  Mika made the quiver with rolled up card stock.  She made the arrows with shortened tooth picks and paper feathers.


Here's the finished diorama.  The sign says, "The Hunger Peeps: May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor".  On the sides of the diorama (didn't get a photo) are pictures of two mockingpeeps that she created on the computer and printed.

She really got into this project and spent a good deal of time and energy on it.  I think she did a great job and has a learned a lot about using resources creatively.

ETA:  Mika won first prize in the teen division of the contest.

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2 Comments:

Cajunrose said...

Wonderful job! So much detail work!

Unknown said...

Good job! I loved making those in school, just wish we could have done more of them! The joys of homeschooling means you can!