Remember the flamingo croquet mallet from Alice in Wonderland? Want one of your own? Okay, here we go. You need a mallet, of course. I got this pretty pastel set online, because I thought the pink one would be easy to modify.
Then you need pink, white, and black paint, the kind that sticks to wooden surfaces; some silver wire; pink silk ribbon; and pink feathers.
Put the mallet together as instructed on the package. Then comes the fun part: painting! Here's what I ended up with, but you can do many variations, maybe a smiley-faced one, for example. If you're doing the whole set with different colours, it might be fun to vary the expressions a bit. This brand of paint (Hobby Line, acryl paint) worked really well: that's just one coat! (If you live in Turku, I got it from Presento.)
I tied the ribbon around the grip while the paint was still wet to help it stick to the mallet. There's four strands of ribbon, but you could use more if you want. I stuck the silver wire through the ribbon and then used it to attach the feathers. (I just placed the feather on top of the ribbon, so the wire is as close to the feathery bits as possible, wound the wire around the quill part and twisted the ends around each other.)
This was the best way I could think of to get it to dry without smudging the paint.
And here's the finished product. I didn't paint the ball to look like a hedgehog, but that might be fun, too.
