ancient egypt 101

gotta love 6th grade.  my daughter just started the school year, and she's learning about ancient egypt.  her first home project was to build a sarcophagus.  the teacher suggested they use an old shoe box, but livia has to go all out on everything she does.  so she talked me into making a close to life size sarcophagus.  i'm officially a sucker.

but then i thought i might turn this post into a tutorial, just in case there's another sucker mom out there, lost, trying to figure out how to build a sarcophagus.  here we go...

the most important part, obviously, is to have a large cardboard box.  i was fortunate enough that we had a box that was perfect for this project.  we just recently purchased a sleep number bed, and one of the boxes the bed came in was just the right length and width for this.  that's what we used.  however, i bet if you go into a moving supply store they would have something in a similar size as the box we used.

here are the other materials we used:
acrylic paint in the colors red, green, blue, black, white and silver
paint brushes (from very small sized, to wide brushes)
decoupage sealer (can be substituted by using 2 parts glue 1 part water)
2 gold spray paint cans
magic clay
acrylic gems
plastic face mask

i put the girls to work!  this was a team project, so i had livia's friend come over and help out.  the first thing we did was prep the box.  we used the decoupage sealer to get the box ready for spray painting.  without this step the color wouldn't have stuck and the cardboard would've sucked up all the gold off the surface.

meanwhile, i worked prepping the face mask.  i used the magic clay to cover up the eyes, nostrils, and i modeled a king cobra to decorate the forehead.  i just looked up pictures of the cobra to have it as a guide, and i winged it.  it turned out okay, though! :)  it is important to mention that i did glue the magic clay on.  magic clay won't stick to the plastic this mask is made of, so i reinforced it by using tacky glue so nothing would fall off.

after this was done we were ready to spray! i took the box outside, and supervised livia.  we used a handy little tool, not sure what it's called, but it attaches to the nozzle of your spray bottle and you pull the trigger to get a continuous spray without hurting your fingers.  it worked out great.  

i had her place the mask where we would affix it later on, but i did not have her glue it in place just yet.  i did it that way so we could add details to the mask after it dried up.  

adding details to the mask... eye makeup, eyebrows, jewels for eyes, then painting the cobra.

the rest of the design was a matter of preference.  i wanted to have it look as legit as a 6th grade project can, but it had to be designs that my daughter could work on (even though i ended up doing 90% of it).  so i started out by researching egyptian symbols and common design trends on egyptian art, especially when depicting the pharao and his powers.  i found a ton of different design ideas, and had to sift through them.  in the end we opted for bold and trademark symbols (seeing eye, the egyptian cross, the sun, the spread eagle).  

the colors chosen were also the same colors commonly used to decorate a sarcophagus.  we even found out their meaning:

gold: pertaining to the divine.  godlike, with god powers

black: death

red: power

green: prosperity to the kingdom

blue: of royal origin.

white: purity

(i used the silver mixed in, to add sparkle to the blue and green)

after i came up with the basic design i kept taking pictures of the project to see if it looked "rich" enough.  pictures have a way of capturing what the eye sometimes won't, especially if you've been staring at this project for so long.  so as i took pictures and noticed it still looked "bare" i kept on building on and adding little details that, in the end, made a huge difference - like adding more jewels to make a bolder bib for the pharao, for instance.  we also wanted to add hieroglyphs, and we actually spelled something out!  "egyptian sarcophagus  project".  livia was pretty thrilled. :)

and after hours and hours of research and work, here's our finished sarcophagus!  totally worth it.  one of livia's friends from school actually fit into the box.  so they wrapped her up with toilet paper, and she came out of the sarcophagus, pretending to be a mummy.  apparently it was the highlight of the day.  :)
yes, i'm a sucker, but i'm also a recipient of "coolest mom" award.  :)