Getting into the Christmas spirit.

I've promised various people that I won't go on about the nice summer weather I'm rapidly getting used to over here, especially with the reports of storms, squalls and snow from back home in the UK.  But all the sun and warm weather has made it really hard to feel remotely christmassy, so inspired by the Wellcome Trust's Festive Tree of Life, I decided to try and make some spacey baubles to adorn our new Australian Christmas tree.    


For me when I see hanging baubles my mind goes to the giant orbs of our solar system, the planets.  So why not make the most of that and make a solar-system inspired Christmas tree? First job, to the local stuff shop to locate some spheres of different sizes.

Two sizes of Baubles and a few ping-pong balls to start with.

Whilst out I armed myself with some packets of play-doh in order to get some nice bright colours to the tree.  I'd originally only planned to make the gas giants - but perhaps Uranus and Neptune were too easy?

I covered the medium-sized bauble with a layer of green play-doh to be Uranus.

So I got really stuck in and inspired to represent the clouds of Jupiter, ending up with this, complete with it's giant red spot.

 
I wasn't sure how much detail I could squeeze on a ping-pong ball, but I'm pretty happy with my representation of our little planet Earth. 

Each of the play-doh baubles I covered with a layer of 50/50 mixed PVA glue and water to finish them off and to stop the dough from drying out.  Here are the final products.

The gas giants, from top Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

And the terrestrial planets, from top Mercury, Venus, Eartha and Mars.

I'm afraid I couldn't resist the more nerdy details - the asteroid belt (which is between Mars and Jupiter and has thousands of bits of rock swirling thought it), the ice line (the point where water ice could form out of our early solar system, which meant that giant planets like Jupiter could be formed) and the Kuiper Belt (the spread of objects beyond Neptune where lots of icy dwarf planets live).

Glitter balls are my asteroids and the Norwegian flags are my ice line

The snowflake beyond Neptune, standing in for the Kuiper belt.

We've topped the whole thing off with some solar powered Christmas lights (only in Australia, huh!) and with a few parcels arriving from overseas I'm really beginning to feel seasonal.  I wonder how mulled wine is at 30 degrees?