Working at the New Carnival Company: Part 1!

This week I began my volunteering / work experience stint at The New Carnival Company; regular readers will remember my recent day trip there to meet them. Their 'flagship event', the Mardi Gras will take place on July 1st so I'm here to lend a hand getting ready for that - primarily in the costume department. Monday was all about travelling down to the Isle of Wight from Bournemouth and settling in, although in the afternoon I helped with prepping for Tuesday's school session. This mostly involved a lot of cutting up ribbons:
ribbin
And making belts / waistbands with double-sided tape and ribbon. Very sticky tricky indeed!
After that Gina and I prepped some chest pieces for 'spice' themed costumes made with fabric printed by some of the carnivalers with foam stamps and acrylic paint which turned out really nicely:

After that it was home time, but also time for a little explore:


Today (tuesday) Gina, Jenny and I went to do a school visit, helping the kids with learning their dance routines and working on their fabulous peacock costumes which they had started last week. We had all the components drawn out ready:
So it was just up to them to cut it all out and assemble it. Jenny and I helped them make the chest pieces, here was the example Jenny had made:
Lovely shiny card and fabric-backed card, sequins, sparkles and pipe cleaners! I'm enjoying learning how to make simple craft-costumes for the kids that they can work on themselves and am hoping to use this time to inspire some of my future craft workshops at Walford Mill Crafts.
Here are some of the chest pieces made by the children:

They seemed to really enjoy our sessions today, especially the dancing and despite the heat and some tricky cutting out! The kids worked really well and got a lot done, so that was great. After we'd finished we had another dance and I managed to meet some of the lovely animals that they keep in the school including some lovely chickens and lovely rabbits!
lovely chickens
lovely rabbit
After school we had a presentation on general carnival health and safety and then it was time for home. That's it for today; more updates on my adventures soon!

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