GIANT VALENTINE’S DAY FOAM STRAWBERRY - DIY Tutorial

Today I'm going to show you how to make a giant strawberry made entirely out of a styrofoam block and some fabric. Now this strawberry only took a few hours to make and it measures almost 24 inches long, so join me for the ride. To begin making our giant strawberry we're going to need styrofoam blocks. Now this one here is 18 inches long by 12 inches wide by 12 inches deep. These blocks are found for free at various places, most notably tractor supply stores or Facebook Marketplace. Now at tractor supply some stores are more lenient than others, so you have to talk to management if you go to a tractor supply store to see if they'll give you their styrofoam blocks for free. Others won't even give them out, but I found these on Facebook Marketplace. You can also look on Craigslist. Just look for styrofoam blocks and maybe someone in your local community has these and is giving them away for free. So once you get your block we need to start carving it. I'm going to be using a hot knife, a curry comb, and a sander. So you need all of that to give it a more, I don't know, strawberry shape. So I'm going to start cutting it from the sides, cutting the corners off, we're going to start scraping it down. We did something similar with our giant pumpkin that we did for Halloween last year, but this one's smaller, super easy. So let's get to cutting this out. But first what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a rough strawberry shape. Now, before we start, if you want your strawberry to be those nice, thick, plump strawberries, then you're going to want to draw it like this and then come like that. But that means your strawberry overall will be smaller. I want my strawberry to be a longer one. So I'm going to draw with a marker like this, all the way down, just so I have visual on what I'm going to start cutting out. Then I'm just going to start cutting out with my hot knife, going to start scraping it with my curry comb, and we're going to get started. So just a big reminder, safety first. If you're using a hot knife, you need to be in a well-ventilated area or with a respirator. You do not want to be breathing in the fumes from the burning styrofoam, so please make sure you're wearing a respirator or you're doing this outside and not smelling this. So let's get started. Let's see how it looks. Okay, so we want a strawberry shape. So we definitely need to remember that, like I said, these blocks are rather long. I wish it was this size. So you could glue two blocks on top, totally okay, so you can get that nice round, or should I say, them nice and thick strawberries like that. You could definitely do that by gluing a second block on top. You would use expanding foam, just a little bit of expanding foam right over here, place it on top, and let it stick. But I don't want to make it so, so big, so I'm just going to use this, and I'm just going to just try to make the basic shape of a strawberry. And just like that, we'll paint it like that, and so just like this, I have a basic strawberry shape. So now that I have this shape, I can begin the cutting process. I'm going to start cutting it down here with the hot knife, hot knife, hot knife, and we're going to do the same thing. You're going to cut it all the way through, do the same thing back here, but you just start one step at a time, okay? Cut here, cut here, cut here, and then start cutting. Just like this, we start removing the corners. You don't have to do the sawing motion, I just do it out of habit, it just slides down just like this. We do the same thing to the other side, you just want to get rid of the sharp corners first. So once you've cut some of the sides, this is what it's going to start looking like. You can continue using the hot knife, shaving off, shaving off, because see, all of these edges need to go. We're trying to make it more of a strawberry shape, so keep on using the hot knife. What I'm going to start doing now though, I'm going to start using my curry comb. Now this is going to start making a lot of styrofoam flakes fall all over the place, so I have this bucket right over here where I'm going to catch all of it, but simply what you're going to do is this. We're going to start giving it a shape, and this curry comb has these nice jagged teeth all over the place, which makes it super easy, and you can hold it and start doing this. Now definitely want to wear like a dusk mask, because this creates a lot of particulates, but if you don't want to do as much scraping with the curry comb, you can continue cutting with the hot knife, but at some point, you're going to have to use something else. So once we're done with the curry comb, that's when we continue with the sanding portion to make it all smoother. So yeah, it's super easy, just like this. We're going to keep on doing it until we get better rounded edges. As you see, it's taking shape, it's taking shape really nicely, but using the curry comb could be taxing for some people. I like the arm workout, and I've only been doing it for about 10 to 15 minutes, and look what it looks like already. So this one is actually pretty easy, but we need to focus on the bottom, the actual point of the bottom of the strawberry, and it needs to be really sharp. So we could get our hot knife that we have and start cutting huge chunks of this off in an angle, so we can start getting the point or the bottom of the strawberry going. I'm going to keep on using the curry comb to get that shape, but definitely to make it easier on you, use the hot knife and cut it off some more, and then continue shaping it, shaping it, shaping it, going all the way around. And once you get a rough shape of the strawberry that you're going for, that's when we can actually get our sandpaper and start sanding the entire thing to smooth it down. So I quickly wanted to talk about the surface of our soon-to-be strawberry. There's areas that are still rough, there's areas that are still high, and we can fix that by using a sander or sandpaper. Now I'm using an orbital sander, but if you don't have one, that's fine, you can just use some sandpaper. We want to use 60 or 80 grit. Start off with 60 first and then go higher. What we're going to do is grab the sandpaper and start going like this, all over the rough areas, the low areas. We want to just smooth out the surface to make it nice and smooth without all these pockets in them. If you want your strawberry to be a little bit more plump, then all you have to do is cut from the sides. Just cut this down like this to be sharper. Just like that. You can use your hot knife or more sandpaper, and then this will be fuller right over here and this will be more narrow. But I like mine this shape right here, so I'm just going to smooth it out more, lower the top a little bit, and then we're ready to go. As always, I'm always talking about safety first. When using styrofoam, it's good to use a respirator or an N95 mask. The particulates are small, you don't want to be breathing that in, so definitely if you're cutting styrofoam with a hot knife, be in a well-ventilated area or outside, you don't want to breathe in those fumes. And if you're sanding, use a respirator or a mask. Safety first, everyone. So if you don't have an orbital sander, we're just going to be using our 60 grit sandpaper. Here I have a sheet right here that I've just folded, and we're going to start passing it all over the surface of this styrofoam. But again, do this outside, and if you can't do it outside, use a respirator or a mask. So give me one second. It looks super smooth right now. Like this is exactly what we want. I'm not sure if you can hear me. Can you hear me? This is exactly what we want, and we're going to keep on doing it. An orbital sander would make it easier, but let's just do it by hand. Let's put some elbow grease into this. We're going to do the entire strawberry that way to give it that nice, smooth finish. So let's keep on going. When it comes to painting our strawberry, we're going to be using Valspar. This one is exterior grade paint in Red Bliss color. Now, this one is a flat. You can use semi-gloss, satin. This one was the only one that was available, so that's why I went with this. But this is what you need. This is a quart size, by the way. Once we've sanded it to what we want it to be, make sure you go outside and dust it off. So you want to run a rag over it. I used a leaf blower on it to make sure I took all of the pieces of styrofoam off. So you want to just clean it to make sure that no more pieces of styrofoam remain. And you just get a regular size brush, and we're going to start painting it. So once your strawberry dries, we're going to want to give it a second coat. If you don't give it a second coat, you're going to be left with white dots. That is the styrofoam that didn't get some red paint. So I haven't given it a second coat. I'm just going to fill in those little dots with a small paintbrush. Instead, I'm going to start drawing on the seeds. Now I ordered some beads, but the beads aren't going to arrive here on time, and they might be a little bit too big. So instead, I'm using a small paintbrush with outdoor acrylic paint in Dijon mustard. And as you can see over here, I already started filling in the seeds, and I'm simply using this paintbrush and making dots like this. Next, we're going to do the strawberry tops, which are scientifically known as calyx. So we're going to need some fabric. This is 100% cotton fabric that I found at a local fabric shop. I bought about a yard of it. We also need fabric glue. Now this is permanent fabric glue that is washable, and it dries clear, so that's pretty awesome. We need wire. Now this wire is very important. This is going to go on the inside of the strawberry leaves, is what I like to call them. This is 22 gauge wire, and this is 16 gauge wire. And you're going to see why we're going to use these, because this is going to stabilize the leaf once it dries completely. We need wire cutters. We need a pen or a green marker. I don't have a green marker anymore, so I'm using a pen. And we need some paper and scissors to cut our fabric. And I've already cut out a shape here. So let me explain to you what I'm doing right here really quickly. What we're going to do with the paper is that we're going to draw a basic leaf shape just like this. I suck at drawing, but look how easy it was. I went right here, just like that, and just like that. Basic leaf shape, which turns into this, and we cut it out. We're using the entire page. This is a regular sheet of paper. So once we've got it out, we've got our leaf shape. Next what we're going to do is we're going to get our fabric. We're going to put our leaf, our paper leaf, on top of the fabric just like that. And then we're going to outline it. You just need to do it lightly so that you can see where we're going to cut it out. Once we outline it completely, we need two of them. So just cut it out, and then do another one. Since this one's folded like this, I could technically just do it like this, bam, draw it out, and then cut it out so that two pieces are cut at once. But I tried it with this one, and it came out really wonky. So I'm going to do them one at a time. So every single leaf of the strawberry needs two pieces of fabric cut, because we're going to sandwich them together. We're going to use the wire inside of the leaves once we sandwich them together, and I'm going to show you that. So a lot going on, but let me break it down with closer views of it so you can see what I'm talking about. So here I have my leaf shape. I'm going to put it right here, and I'm going to grab my pen, and I'm simply going to outline it like that. I prefer a marker because it just runs smoother on the fabric, but we have to do what we have with the resources that we were given. OK, just like that. Basic outline. Let's just cut it out. And see, this cut two sides, but the other side is not long enough, so we're just going to not use that piece. Right here, and then just like that. We're going to go around the trace that we did with the pen. OK, so once we've cut one of them out, we need a second one, because like I said, it's going to be a sandwich. One's going to go on the top, one's going to go on the bottom. Not with the paper. And just like this, bam. So now we have two. So now that we have these two, this is when we get the wire and we put it on the inside, and we put the other one on top of it, just like this. So we're going to do a sandwich just like that. And I have our 16-gauge wire right here. You're going to grab one piece, and that one piece of 16-gauge wire is going to go across the middle, just like this. And we can cut it right over here, like that. Make sure you straighten it out as best as possible, just like this. And then you have your 22-gauge wire that we're going to do little crisscrosses like this. It's going to go like this. Basically, you're doing the width of the fabric, just like that. So I'm probably going to actually put four of these like that. And as you can see, this is the top of the leaf. And they're all facing like this. They're like a U, and they're facing up just like that. So once we do that like this, we can apply our fabric glue. We're going to apply it on the wire in between the leaves. We're going to apply it everywhere so that I should have kept the bottom out of there. But basically, so that once we put that on top of there, and we put these on top, this one is going to go just like that. It's going to be a sandwich. You want to make sure all the wires are on the inside. We'll put these back in. But yeah, you want to make sure you put all the wires in there. You put a lot of glue so that it's just sandwiched just like that. So before we start gluing, I want to show you something that I changed. This is the original 16-gauge wire that I cut, which was the length of the leaf. But then I remembered that we need to attach it to the styrofoam strawberry. So I left about four inches remaining. So that can go inserted into the top of it. If it's too long, we can always cut it. But it's better to have more and not need it than have too little and actually need it. So let's change that, OK? I leave about four to five inches of wire out on the side. We'll put that one to the side. And then we get our 22-gauge wire that we put right over here, just like this. Perfect. And then we get our, it's called craft bomb. It's this fabric glue right here that I found. And we're just going to put healthy amounts right along the middle, the sides, just like that. Now, we could put some glue on this one as well. But I think it's sufficient enough to put it on just the bottom one that we don't need to put some on the top. Make sure it's the same direction. And then we grab it. And then we gently put it on top like. And we make a leaf sandwich. So press it down. You're going to see the glue starting to show through the fabric. And that's OK. You just need to press it down. Use gloves for this, because I can feel the glue coming through. But it's easy to wash in the sink, so no big deal. So make sure you're pressing down on where the wire is, on where the fabric is, so it can make a good contact. There we go. And once we're done with this, we're going to put this to dry. I'm going to leave it drying overnight. But I think it could be dry in maybe three or four hours. But yeah, I'm going to go ahead and make between six and 10 of them per strawberry. And let's see how it looks when it's fully dry. Now we can attach the leaves that we did earlier. So here's the leaves. As you can see, this wire over here bends really easy, just like that. And what we want to start doing is sticking it in right at the top, at the top of your strawberry. So the first one we're going to put in like this. Push all the way in. And then we're going to start bending the leaves like that. Now, what's awesome about these leaves is that you can put them any shape you want. And I'm just realizing that I might need to cut it just a little bit. There we go. And then we put another one inside there. Go all the way in. And then start moving it and putting them in the shape that you want. And it's super simple. Put another one right over here, all the way in like that. And then bend it down. And I can turn it down if I want, like this, put it down like that, or bring it up. And we're going to put all the leaves. I'm going to do between 8 to 10 leaves on this. And we're just going to keep on doing that until we get the look that we're going for, just like that. See?