Bubble O' Bill Party Prop

From the moment I decided to throw my child a Bubble O Bill themed first birthday party, I knew I wanted there to be an oversized Bubble O Bill prop. And I knew I wanted it to be ‘affordable’ (aka cheap). I was able to pull this off using materials found around the house. The hardest part was probably creating the template.

There are a number of ways you can create a template: freehand draw, using a projector and tracing, or the kind of cumbersome way I did it.

Sourcing an image from the internet I took to Photoshop with my very lacklustre skills. It was as simple as opening Filter, selecting Stylize and applying the ‘Find Edges’ effect. Quickly my image became an outline. I scaled the image to the size I wanted then printed it as tiled sheets on A4 paper so I could tape them all together and make a template at the size I wanted. Once the template was stuck together I used a scalpel to cut the outer shape. This I traced on to some scrap carboard we had at home. I would repeat the cutting and tracing steps until all the elements were drawn on the card board. Then using my scalpel knife again I cut out the main shape. Sadly I didn’t get any photos of this entire phase.

To paint the prop I pulled out my well expired paints from art school that I purchased 20 years ago. Surprising nobody, some of the paints were dried out. Because the cardboard I used was brown I decided to use a white acrylic paint to paint a base layer so the colours would be nice and bright. My painting area was a cardboard box on the carpeted floor of my living room, while my partner and mum watched TV and the infant slept in the room next door threatening to wake at any moment.

From there it was just a matter of mixing colours to get the right shade. I was not entirely happy with the green for the bubble gum nose - but as I mentioned earlier, some of the paints had dried and I had no other yellows and blues to mix the right green. I was also using some pretty crappy paint brushes so I decided to embrace the ‘painterly’ effect. Also, let’s pause to appreciate that OG pink Itty Bitty Bin that I have been using for my painting water since the year 2000. It might even be a collectors item. The colour mixing is a bit rough but as I said I was working with very limited colours. If I wanted to spend more than one evening on this project I would have gone and bought more paint.

Just because the ice cream stick handle was particularly skinny I did add a wooden ruler to the back and stick it down with packing tape just to give it a bit of support and strength during handling - and really we could all use a bit of extra strength and support some days. We used the prop for his first birthday shoot and then put it aside until his second birthday when we could actually have a party. And in the end - it was a darn good party prop…. if only I had remembered to put it out…