Another snail tale…

With their messy trails and taste for greens, garden snails are most often considered to be pests, but did you know that they have a strong homing instinct? Not only is Carter thoroughly in love with snails, this past term Maia’s class topic has been snails.

So let me tell you we now know all about these slimy little guys!

Maia has been bugging me for quite a while to make a snail, and I have to admit I see her point, a home made snail will be much cuter, there will be no slime, and no holes munched in my precious veg! So we set to and made one out of paper mache. If you want to make one for yourself here’s how:

Step 1: Screw up loads of newspaper, and using a gazillion pieces of tape stick it all together into a snail shape. I know Ive glossed over this a bit – but use your imagination and believe me there is a whole lot of paper and tape in this snail….

Step 2: Once you have your basic form, you need to add 2-3 layers of paper mache (tiny pieces of newspaper glued on in layers with pva glue). When you are satisfied with the shape and that there are enough layers, leave to dry until it is rock hard.

Step 3: When dry decoupage it with some light paper (that’s another layer or two of paper mache in pretty paper). Voila… one retro looking snail!

Cute isn’t s/he?? (snails are hermaphrodites) Now you can make a whole escargatoire of your own… that’s a group of snails in case you were wondering 🙂