With a LOT of Miles's help and both of our good ideas all put together, we've made what I consider masterpieces, which you'll see in a sec! Or now, since the page is pretty big. Oh well, less suspense.
The story behind this post is that I'm working on building my violin studio and needed some little practice violins for young beginners. I teach them to hold them correctly and use their bow, and THEN we begin to use the instrument, so they develop good technique before we start strumming/bowing away like crazy. :) Anyway, I had used a cardboard box "violin," like this,
but I didn't love it--violins are NOT shaped like boxes! There are two options I've found online that a lot of teachers use-- the "foam-a-lin", and the "cherub box violin". Both of them have their plusses and minuses, but 10+ bucks for a cardboard violin!? I figured with Miles's and my mad skills combined, we could make something just as good for a lot cheaper, and make it look a little more like the real thing.
After a quick trip to Lowe's and one to JoAnn, we were ready. Our front room became a construction zone, which lasted until I taught on Friday, when it moved to the bedroom until we got everything put together. The violins were pretty straightforward; cut, paint, seal, but the bows...here is where Miles's genius came out. I just knew that I wanted to use 3/8 inch wooden dowels and put a wooden frog (the little square part on the end of a bow) on them, and I thought maybe we could just drill out a half circle from each little rectangle frog piece. I guess I figured I'd just hold it real tight with one hand, and drill with the other? Luckily, Miles knows his tools better, and we ended up drilling a couple frogs at once, clamped between some other wood so that it was secure. (thanks for the clamps, Mom and Dad Nielson!) We had a 3/8 inch bit, so drilling straight through was the only tricky part, but once we got that down we were cruising! |
| Stage one. Bows are glued, and violins cut out. :) I toyed with the idea of covering them in cardboard, but decided to paint them instead. |
 |
| And here is the finished product. TA-DAAAA! Well, except the dot on the frog. |
 |
| Next to my full size violin. Since I'll be using these in my JumpStart class, I looked up the measurements of smaller violins and made a scale model (I put mine halfway between 1/10 and 1/16 size, violin-ers out there :)) |
Anyway, there you go! I should also probably mention that while we were painting, cutting, and gluing we succeeded in watching the entire series of David Attenborough's BBC "Life of Birds" videos on pbs.org. . . yes, we are nerds, but I now am chock full of fun facts about birds all over the world (p.s. you really should look up the lyrebird. Just do it!), AND have a set of little practice violins and bows to use with my younger students. :)
