Jayfer

The Creation of Jayfer

Just 4 Kids Management | Creation of Jayfer | The Official Just 4 Kids Mag

I have been involved with many different motoring events and the Just4kids Motor Trail since its inception. Something that seems to be common to all these events is, the children of the communities we visit, like the themed entries the most.

With this in mind and the Just4kids logo in front of me, I thought it would be great to have a Just4kids mascot. Jayfer was conceived.

Armed with a picture of the J4K logo I spoke with my mother, whom is pretty handy with the sewing machine, if she could make an oversized yellow T-shirt with a big 4 on the front. Silly mum said “I don’t see why not.” If only she knew what she had got herself into!

After some discussions it was decided that just a T-shirt was not going to be good enough, yes a head would have to be made and you can’t just have a shirt and head walking around, He needed legs too. A simple T-shirt wouldn’t be much good either; it needed something to give it shape.

Off to mums favourite shop, thank god for Spotlight, we purchased all sorts of materials, cottons, and iron on glue. Then off to the local rubber shop where we purchased a large sheet of foam rubber and more glue.

I’m not the smallest of people so mum decided that if I could wear Jayfer then most people would fit inside him. She took measurements and drew things on newspaper them she cut out a huge T-shirt from the foam rubber. A big number 4 was made out of pink and purple material and ironed onto a piece of yellow material then meters of orange strips were cut and hemmed.

After many hours of work mum produced what is now Jayfers shirt. We decided on white cargo style shorts and many more hours later they appeared. I tried the foam lined T-shirt on and discovered that the foam was clinging to my own T-shirt so mum spent several more hours making a silk lining for him.

How do you stop a mascots shorts falling down? Easy sew them to his shirt. How do you put on a shirt when it is sewn to a pair of shorts? Again easy, you put a zipper up the back of the shirt. Now poor old Jayfer can’t dress himself.

With the body of our mascot looking pretty good it was time to think about his head. Design one didn’t work too well at all, but if at first you don’t succeed, get a bigger hammer, no, try again.

Design 2 version 1, the idea was OK but the construction wasn’t strong enough. We had made a papier-mache dome but it wasn’t big enough or strong enough. After a bit of searching we found a balloon with an 18 inch diameter when inflated and design 2 version 2 worked well. 20 layers of paper and many more hours, Jayfers head was looking good.

Some cardboard, glue and an old hardhat later and you can wear the head and even see out through Jayfers mouth. A bit of paint some soft ears and hair and he’s complete.

When you look at the original logo we created Jayfer from, he has purple arms, you can’t see his hands and he doesn’t have a bottom half. We gave him white shorts and we decided to give him purple legs to match his arms. Mum made purple stockings and arms and a purple neck too and we used white gloves and socks for his hands and feet. To finish him off we found a pair of orange sandals.

After several hundred hours of work including a few boo-boos and many laughs Jayfer is now a fully functioning mascot (just add a person). He can be worn by anyone but they really need to be over 160 cm tall and someone has to zip you up as you can’t reach the zip in your back.

Enjoy!

Thanks Mum Carnsew