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Sunday 6 June 2010

First ever carnival float

This year marked the first year in my history that I've planned, designed and starred in my own carnival float at the annual Brompton Carnival (2010), along with my niece and nephew.

It was conceived about 6 weeks before the actual carnival, coming up with an idea that would:
  1. Be quick and easy to put together
  2. Would require few people on the trailer
  3. Would be unique (never been done before)
How could we do this?
Christmas.  We'd cover the trailer with Christmas decorations, last years Christmas cards, tinsel, paperchains, empty boxes wrapped up, homemade decorations (from salt-dough) and anything else Chrismassy we could find, we'd play Christmas music too.  And our theme/slogan Christmas gets earlier every year

Jack (14 YO nephew) would be Father Christmas, Emily (9 YO niece) would be visiting Father Christmas (dressed in her bestest Christmas frock).  The trailer would be turned into a grotto, and me, I'd stand at the side of the trailer, as a snowman.

I made my outfit from scratch: a white duvet cover fashioned into 2 snowballs, basically making 2 skirts with hoops to hold the fabric out.  The top skirt was elasticated at the top and bottom, whereas the bottom skirt was loose (so I could walk.  The head was a little more difficult, and the rounded shape was created with a hanging-basket liner (new), a carrot-nose created with a squeaky dog-toy on elastic (also new), and funky-foam mouth, and eyes.  The eyes had stretched tights across, so I could see where I was going.  I wore a black top and long gloves too.  A scarf tidied up any loose ends of the pillowcase hear.

On the day: there were 5 floats and we came 2nd, call me biased but I thought our float was better than the winning one; the winners were in the back of a pick-up (hardly a mechanically drawn vehicle) decorated in branches from a tree, complete with  3 kids in animal outfits and a woman wearing a safari suit, they were In the Jungle. IMHO - not very creative, inventive and clearly shop-bought outfits, but I could be biased.

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