Our Solar System

Remember that solar system I was all gung-ho to make? Well, after many delays we finally got it assembled and painted up. Our biggest delay came in finding supplies, as our trips to the craft store were postponed a few times. Once we made it we were delighted to find a kit of foam balls prepackaged (at a decent price) that were all the right sizes for our project! Turned out to be a good thing too, because the shop was out of foam balls in varying size, dolly pegs (we needed those too), white glue, and a handful of other items I was looking for. All though I suspect they weren't as much out of stock as they were simply "in boxes" as they were rearranging..

Once we decided to work on it we pulled out the paints and newspaper and set to work. The idea was to cover up all the balls with foil first. This gave them some of those real looking craters and valleys and mountainous regions. Painting them was another story, the objects are round and that meant getting covered in paint.

I had fun painting earth, and made sure to include Australia. It came out pretty well since I had to freeform it over foil. It was the only one I painted as I was busy mixing paint and rolling the balls in glue sticks and aluminum foil. Lawrence and Morgan did the majority of the painting and despite the top picture enjoyed themselves while they were at it..

Jayden planted the big yellow sunshine, and he screamed a few times frightening all of us. Apparently the sun "burned him". Yeah we didn't exactly laugh when I squirted red paint across the table instead of onto the artist palette..

It was so cold in the house (and wet outside) that it took a while for these little fellows to dry. We eventually moved them closer to the heaters and then hung them up on the ceiling with our stars. I'll have to wait for the sun to properly shine in order to get a picture of them, but it looks quite nice. To hang them up we put small eyelets in the top of them that we had on hand. Then I used string and taped the string to the ceiling. They are holding up really well despite the occasional touch to the sun when someone screams out, "I've been burned!"