No, I am not referring to the stock market, to chicken stock or whatever else you may have been thinking. This… was fun. We had a fancy dress event for work a few years back and the theme was absolutely wonderful. We had a medieval theme. Something we could really have fun with. Something with options. I immediately had the idea of dressing up as a medieval captive. To make the stocks however would be challenging at best. I had no idea where to begin.
I chatted with my husband regarding making it work, but he also could not come up with any ideas on how to make the stocks look real, or even what to use. At work, I chatted with a trusted colleague (fancy dress ideas are confidential and serious business you know!) who immediately said I should use foamalite. Well, the flashing bulb above my head suddenly shone brightly. He flicked on the switch. I went digging through the disposal items in our basement and found a heap of foamalite that would work quite nicely.
Since the foamalite was mostly strips, blocks and smaller pieces. I had to somehow get the things to stick together. Needless to say… glue did nothing! I used packaging tape (ah the wonderful inventions of modern times) to keep the pieces together. Once I had two blocks of appropriate size, I cut out the head and arm pieces. I once again sealed the open bits with tape.
I was left with an ugly piece of taped together foamalite. Oh well, a good starting point at least. I bought a self adhesive plastic coated roll of wood coloured paper and wrapped the foamalite. I was left with edges that simply wouldn’t look authentic. I used a large strip over those edges and made several cuts to glue down. I used velcro to keep the edges together; which had the added benefit of making removal easy.
The end result was an authentic looking medieval stock. The feedback on it was overwhelming. People loved it and my husband, Waldo, got into the spirit by dressing as a medieval executioner, with me as his prisoner. Tell me you see the endless options here?
It was remarkably easy to put together and today, I refuse to part with it.
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