My sons swing between seeing me as the Naive Ignoramus and the Master Blaster. This was one of the latter instances. My irrepressible youngest waltzed in and announced that he needed to make a model for this year's project - it had to bigger and better than last year's, a neat little resort cottage with glazed windows, paned doors, wall-fitted lights and a gazillion pieces of broomstick cut to size and stuck onto the facade. This year, he announced, he was going for gold - his model should be so awesome that it would be chosen to be centerpiece. He had picked the magnificent temple of Mazu in Singapore - Thian Hock Keng.
Now, I'm not a total pushover. Last year, the kid's plans had far outstripped his talents. I had started him off with a few tips on model building, but soon discovered that about the only part of it within his reach was cutting the broomstick to size. Not wanting to get into an exercise of that proportion again, I read him the terms, not forgetting the fine print.
Well, he IS a year older. And marginally wiser. After a few fruitful hours with his ready reference, Wikipedia (i swear he has a physical cable connecting him to it, i just need to find it), he had a rough copy of the floor plan, some ideas for detailing, and a list of materials. A trip to the stationers brought home mountboards, colored cardstock, corrugated sheets, paints, fevicol, colored cellotape and shiny new cutters.
I found a dramatic improvement in his marking and cutting skills (although he did insist on using my precious 24"x6" quilting scale!!), and we spent the next few days putting the model together.
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| The Main Temple |
Constraints of time and scale significantly curtailed our initial ideas - mseal dragons and curved pagoda roofs gave way to more two dimensional detailing. Glossy color printouts and scissors came to our aid. We also made liberal use of artistic license!!
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| The Outer Arcades and an Entrance |
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| Paper Dragons |
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| Tiled Central Courtyard |
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| The Main Shrine of Mazu Through Three Door Openings |
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| Paper Lantern Offerings Along Inner Courtyard |
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| The Temple |
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| Facade and Entrance |
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| The Mandatory Green |
And YESSSS!!! it made centerpeice... :)
3 comments:
Oh my!! what gorgeousness! It is truly a work of art! I cannot begin to imagine the amount of time you must have spent on this!
Please please come and live with us when Alvin needs to make projects for his assignments. ;-) great work, Aparna! this project deserves being the centerpiece!
OMG!!!! What a project !!! very detailed and very neatly done!!! kudos Aparna!!!
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