I know I’ve talked about mascot ice carvings a lot lately, but this one just fell in my lap the other day. LSU and Florida have a football game coming up in Baton Rouge and I was asked to come up with some ideas for a private, night before preparty. The rough sketch of the bar above was one of my ideas. They didn’t go for it, but I felt like I’d come up with a pretty good idea that I can use in the future for other similar events.

    Structurally, the bar would be plenty strong because I elected to cut the mascots off above the knees. This eliminates two typical weak points for figures, ankles and knees. And by making them shorter in this way, I can also make the body parts that are left larger, meaning that the bar will be stronger and last longer. The large base rectangle at the bottom represents the drainage trays and/or ice for the base. I hadn’t completely worked that part out, but it wouldn’t typically be much of a problem.

    Now the heads take up a lot of bar-top real estate, but I felt like the sacrifice was worth it. By adding important elements above the bar surface, you add interesting and accessible elements to a design that may suffer visually in the midst of a crowded party. In other words, when that party is going full tilt, nobody will really be able to see the whole ice bar because there will probably be a lot of people standing in front of it! I’d have to take special care to get the bartop thickness right because if it’s wrong, their heads would end up in the wrong spot.

    Another important consideration is how to deal with the tails. I think I would probably transport the figures with most of their tails already attached, using a transport strut to keep them from breaking off. Once set up is nearly complete, I’d add the very tips of their tails and then cut the transport struts out.

    I won’t get to make this bar this year, but LSU and Florida play every year, so maybe I’ll get another shot. Besides, this idea is highly adaptable and there’s no reason to think that I (or you) can’t substitute in some other mascots and change the date. Heck, I might even try to sell it for when Auburn plays Florida, since they have a tiger mascot too!