SMUDGE: June 2014

Is it just me, or are watermelons such a happy fruit? They are everywhere at the moment! I see them on girls tee-shirts, on nails, as purses, on fabric, on jewellery and loads more. I think it's because they're so bright, cheerful and delicious! Everyone wants them.

Including me! I was actually wanting to make some fun watermelon bookends to keep my books from falling over. So of course, I looked on Pinterest (as you do) and google, but I couldn't find anything even remotely similar to what I wanted. So I decided to make them up as I went along. They ended up totally bringing out the child in me, and I seriously love how they turned out!

For anyone wanting to make them, read below!

First, get your pieces together. To do this, I quickly printed out a cartoon picture of half a watermelon and then traced it on some white cardboard. Then I measured two strips of cardboard the same length as the watermelons straight edge and made it 2" wide. Then I needed one longer strip of cardboard the same length as the rounded edge of the watermelon, and the same width (2") as the other strips.

Time to cut them out! Keep in mind this is just for one bookend though. You'll need to cut double to make both. Best to do that now.

Grab some sticky tape and tape your two smaller strips to your two watermelon pieces, creating a little compartment inside as shown below!

Then tape your long strip to the outer edge, making sure the tape completely covers the joining edges on the bottom. Leave an opening at the top for now.

For this step, I chose to just use some rocks from outside! But you can use whatever you like! Even clay, or something heavy that you want to keep hidden away! Forever.

Tip it into the compartment that you made, and then tape down the rest of the strip to cover. Again, make sure you completely tape over the joining sides and top.

*Optional step*

I decided to tape on one last strip to the bottom of the watermelon, for extra support. But this is totally up to you.

Now we're getting to the really fun part!! Time to step back into our childhood days, and paper mache it all together! You can use proper paper mache glue from the shops OR you can just make some with flour and water, like I did. There are heaps of recipes on google.