The final two elements that needed to be made were the banner, and the bridge itself. The sides of the bridge were cut from two four foot lengths of 2x8 pine board. These were primed and then painted a light grey color.
The slats for the bridge were seven inch lengths of a 1x4, which were painted white. I wasn't concerned about exact evenness of lengths, or beautiful uniform painting. I liked the idea of it looking somewhat crude and homemade.
Once the initial coat of grey was dry, the suggestion of stones was painted along the sides using a darker grey. The results sort of look like black and white giraffes. I wasn't going for realism, and knew that in the final installation, it would look like what it was supposed to be.
The bridge would later be assembled on site.
For the banner, I traced one of the bridge sides on a large piece of cardboard, so that the arc of the banner would match the arc of the bridge above it. Gloves with pointing index fingers were fashioned out of cereal box and newspaper, and attached to the cardboard banner with masking tape. The entire thing was then covered in paper mache, a somewhat difficult task since the entirety of the banner was longer than any table I had to work on.
Once dry, the banner was primed and then painted a bright red. I printed out the words "Children's Books" in a large font size on a few different colored sheets of paper (I ended up only using white, yellow, and off white), which I ripped into the individual letters, then decoupaged onto the banner using white glue followed by a coat of clear gloss. I thought this would look better than any hand painted lettering I could manage on a somewhat uneven surface, and would also be easier to read from a distance.
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