The Isle of Wight Festival is a world renowned music festival held annually on the Isle of Wight with its roots going back to the early festivals of the 60's / 70's.

A main part of the festival is the Electro Love stage, held in a giant marquee and celebrating the music of the 80's and 90's retro scene,

Amanda was excited to be invited to help out the excellent Creative Team led by Elspeth Moore who build the retro visual artistic scenery for the stage area.

Amanda noticed there were no starfish for such a nautical theme and set about creating a pair of male and female starfish.

Using paper mache as her medium of choice she started with a base of cardboard building up several layers to get the rough shape and thickness that she required for this project.

With the cardboard base constructed, the next task is to gradually build up layer after layer of torn up paper pieces mixed with copious amounts of PVA glue.

Additional detail such as the sunglasses and bikini are added in using more cardboard cut to shape and then papered over and smoothed down.

It's a very messy but strangely satisfying task !

After a zillion layers of newspaper and two and a half litres of pva glue the formation was complete other than the addition of an ice lolly and an ice cream.

A couple of layers of white emulsion to seal them and then paint in the detail with acylic paints to complete them .

All finished and ready to party !

Roll on Electro Love '23