Paper Mache Life-Sized Baby Groot!

In early February of this year (2018) my Homeschool group had their yearly Valentine’s party, each year (since 2011) me and my friend have a little competition upon who can make the coolest Valentine’s box, since this is my senior year in high school I decided to “GO BIG OR GO HOME!” So I decided to make a life-sized Baby Groot holding a little cardboard heart. Groot isn’t scaled accurate to the movie but is about double the size as seen in the film Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2. Everyone loved it at the party and it was a huge success. By the way, my friend’s box was an amazing toilet replica, but I still won due to our confusing point system that makes no sense. I wanted to make this Instructable since I finished the Incredible PAPER MACHE CLASS on the Instructables website. I would highly recommend this class because it is not just a kid’s craft it’s an art form, and it showed me new techniques I would never had thought of before. https://www.instructables.com/class/Paper-Mache-Cl...

Open cell foam (like cushion foam, most craft stores carry it).

1” PVC pipe (about 14” long, or 35.56 cm).

4Ft Copper wire (any flexible wire will work as long as it can hold the weight of the body).

A laundry detergent lid (don’t eat the detergent, no matter how tasty it looks!)

Pipe Cleaners.

Crayola model magic clay (in black).

Brown packing paper.

Cardboard (normal corrugated cardboard, and thin cardboard that is used to for cereal boxes.)

Tissue Paper.

Flour.

Water.

School glue.

Masking tape.

5min epoxy.

Acrylic paint (Kelly green, Nutmeg brown, Barn red, White, Black.)

Tools you’ll need:

Hot glue Gun

Various Paint Brushes.

Scissors.

Mixing bowl.

With my experience on building stop-motion puppets (as a hobby) I was able to make a simple frame to get the shape I wanted.

I cut two 10in. (or 25.4cm) pieces of wire for the arms and one 25in. (63.5cm) piece for the legs. The drawing should help you how to bend the wire around the PVC pipe. I used Pipe cleaners to construct the hands.

Take the
Open cell foam and wrap it around the legs and body, use the masking tape to create the shape by adding more tension on places that are thin, and loosening the tape to make the foam wider.

Use the brown packing paper to construct the arms by wrapping it around the wire, and taping both ends of the paper to the wire.

First print out my pattern for the head (PDF) cut it out and trace it on the thin cardboard,Bend it so the two ends of paper match the lines, and tape the top of the head in place and then hot glue it.

Mix up some Paper Mache Clay. First take the tissue paper and tear it up into tiny pieces then add water and flower until the mix is the constancy of bread dough. Start sculpting it onto the cardboard. When you are done sculpting just leave it alone for around 24hr.to dry. The next day take the Crayola model magic clay and sculpt two half spheres (for the eyes) after that dried I took 5min epoxy and brushed it on the clay to add a gloss.

I used Kelly green, Nutmeg brown, Barn red, White, Black Acrylic paint and mixed them to various values of brown and weathered it with some moss and small leaves. The most helpful thing is to look at a picture and try to get it as close as possible. Let the paint dry then you have successfully made your very own Baby Groot.

I cut out two large heart shapes and cut out a 4in. (10.16cm) strip to go around the shape. I used: a red LED, a toggle switch, and a 1.5v button cell battery. (Simple electrical schematic above!)

I painted the heart shaped box red, and hot glued it to a big piece of cardboard.

I had a ton of fun building this project and I hope you have fun also.

Please leave a comment (No matter how nerdy.)

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Happy Building!