More than just a Painter

This is obviously a three dimensional waffle cone with a scoop of ice cream on top. The entire ice cream cone measures about eleven feet high and is close to five feet in diameter at it's widest point. Along with ideas and help from my wife and another friend, we were the architects, designers, engineers, sculptors and painters for the whole project and I was quite relieved when it rolled out the door all finished last week. There were several issues to solve before beginning to build the cone. How will it attach to the float and stand up? How will it handle a wind load? How would the internal structure be constructed? What materials would be best suited to make a large realistic ice cream cone? The last thing and the most important item to my family and every neighbor from blocks around.....what flavor should the ice cream be? The cone will be used as a featured item in a few parades this summer. I really enjoy these types of projects and have completed several of them over the past ten years. I would love to have part of my business be designing and building large three dimensional objects for parades, trade shows or whatever. In addition to being extremely challenging, they provide a sometimes needed break from painting. It is still art but different.