More Leaves Please…….. The Rainforest Display by Birmingham Branch of The British Sugarcraft Guild
The NEC is our local exhibition centre and we have been putting on a branch display table at the annual “Cake” exhibition even before the British Sugarcraft Guild UK became involved. We are very pleased that ICHF are able to allocate space for our displays. The members work together to produce some amazing displays of sugarcraft for exhibitions and for Cake 2009 at the NEC created a twelve foot sparkly road made up of individual sugar cobbles with a sugar model of Cinderella looking beautiful in her clear acrylic carriage.
Before the show was finished we had booked our space for Cake 2010 and had started discussing topics!
Members voted for the subject the Rainforest despite my caution at the time “You do realise that this will mean making an awful lot of leaves?…………”.
We wanted to create a display with visual appeal and at the same time present some interesting rainforest facts but we also wanted to avoid preaching about the loss of the rainforest. So the table was divided in two giving us nine feet for the rainforest scene and nine feet for the additional items and facts.
For a week in October BSG Birmingham in conjunction with Icing World, Warwick Road, Acocks Green, occupied a shop in the Touchwood Shopping Centre, Solihull, as part of the “Yourspace” initiative. Members put on a display of work and worked on items for the rainforest display inviting visitors to check on progress and also have a go.
We were very grateful to John, the husband of one of our members, who expertly cut out the six shaped standing panels which we later covered with sugar leaves. To give a sense of depth we painted the panels grey then painted on foliage. The next stage, over several workshops, was to cut out a variety of sugar leaves and apply them to the panels while still soft. Then, on a fine day, we took the panels outside and the trusty airbrush came out and the rainforest started to come to life. John had drilled lots of holes in the panels so that when we set up the display we could attach the hundreds of wired sugar leaves that the members had been making.
Dummies Direct kindly produced a polystyrene dummy for the parrot with hardboard wings and you can see the before and after pictures on their website www.dummiesdirect.com . Every feather was made and attached individually and even the back of the wings were feathered as we didn’t know how much would be visible. Our waterfall was constructed using offcuts also supplied by Dummies Direct and covered with gelatine paste to create the rock surface.
This was a challenging project because it is difficult to represent the scale of the rainforest. We painted a backdrop with sky and trees and hung some pale silver organza in front to represent mist. Finishing touches included many beautiful plants and orchids, tree bark, rocks, bugs, snakes, butterflies, insects, frogs, dragonflies, spiders and tiny rodents as well as a cougar.
