It's all Jell-O all the time around here, though I have no idea what I am doing as a piece this year. I made a few flowers and some Slugs-on-Sticks to sell, since people always want to take home something and I am not making many of the fascinators anymore. I have previous years' pieces to bring, which I will, but I still have to make something new. Lots of other things are working around in my brain.
The script is fun and pretty firmed up, so we have to learn and sing the songs over and over and try to get that done. Not many weeks left until March 22! We spent like an hour just working out how to sing one tiny short song which was a little ambitious for our troupe. We managed. Also, it is a forgiving audience so if we don't sound great, no one complains too loudly. We didn't really manage to channel Taylor Swift that well last year...those stars are popular for a reason, and it's not just the clothes.
Costumes are a very fun part and I have been working on mine, shuffling through my vast quantities of thrifting finds and ridiculous accessories I have held onto for just the one moment when they will be perfect. I don't want to spend any money this year if possible, supporting the boycotting to take down the oligarchy and all, but I might have to get a thing or two.
Doing everything simultaneously is fun for me, lets my mind roll around being its weirdest with no consequences. By the time the show comes many ideas have been discarded for better ones or simplicity and I can trust that. If I go too far off people start telling me what to do and not do and I like to avoid that so I project their attitudes into my head sometimes to limit myself. One limit is how much I can fit in my car, because I have to get it all there and get it home. A ton of work goes into the three-hour show.
If you are curious about how to make the flowers, it is a lot like making flowers from paper, folding and curling the gelatin into floral shapes. You have to get the dried gelatin to act like paper, which is tricky. I usually brush water onto the parts I want to bend, both sides, and wait a little for it to soften up so I can shape it without breaking it. Then I put it on a stick, glueing it with the molten gelatin, and glue a leaf on there too. I don't get too figurative with the flowers, just try to please my eye and make something fairly graceful. I layer up a few pieces, maybe a rolled on in the center or a few pieces of something of another color to look like stamens, or just an unusual concoction not necessarily found in nature.
One of the important things to do with Jell-O art is let it do what it wants. It isn't that cooperative about meeting your vision, and the dried stuff distorts itself as it dries, which I just work around. I have made things that looked ugly and I just take them apart and do something else.
Most of it does not photograph very well, and I should have waited for better light on these, but I'm trying to be productive today and stop doom scrolling, and there's no sun. Sunlight really does nice things to the flowers, shining through them onto the background and all. I'll look through some old ones and see if I can find better illustrations of how you might want to do it. Or just, like all things Jell-O, roll up your sleeves and get to it.
I noticed that at the Kiva they do have plain gelatin but a one-pound box is $21.00! I have gotten it for about $10 a pound in bulk but everything has gone up, so you might just have to treat it like the fine art material it wants to be. I expect the Jell-O brand is still cheap, and will go on sale for Easter, so if you want to make some Tacky Food, look for that.
Here's a video of 2023, just to get you in some kind of a mood. YouTube There's No Bizness Like Jell-O Bizness
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