LEHI — For weeks, Dave Haws and Cole McClure have been covered from head to foot in paint, glue and glitter.
They slave away each day behind Haws' Lehi floral shop, brainstorming, designing, drafting, sculpting and gluing. When it doesn't work, they do it again.
The end result of their labors could be described as, well, magic.
Haws and McClure spent the last month designing and building Lehi city's float for the Fourth of July parade in Provo, which starts at 9 a.m. at 960 N. University Ave. and will finish at 900 East and Center Street.
The float, featuring the likeness of a magician in billowing purple robes and a long flowing beard, is 26 feet long and 15 feet tall.
One of the magician's hands is holding a wand; the other is stretched out in front of him with a place for Miss Lehi to stand.
"It is beautiful," said Chrissy Merrell, executive assistant to the parade committee of America's Freedom Festival at Provo, the organization that plans the Independence Day event. "This float is way out of the ordinary. Usually, they are all detailed and beautiful, but this one is just over the top. It's the most magical float I've ever seen."
That magic comes at a price. From the first day they start work on the float to the float's last run in a parade, the pair's creativity is stretched to extremes. And that's just the way they like it.
"It's a pain, but it's fun," said 18-year-old McClure, who works as an assistant at Haws Floral and Gifts, 127 E. Main. "It takes a lot of planning, a lot of drawing, coming up with the ideas, welding, building the frames, dealing with the foam, working out how we're going to attach this, making sure it's not too tall to go under the overpass, finding a place big enough to store it. It's quite an adventure."
Haws, whose background is in design, volunteered to make his first float last year as a new way to be creative.
He's spent most of his adult life designing anything he could, from dresses to stage sets, but he soon found that floats take every ounce of artistic juice he has.
"We're always pushing our limits," Haws said. "Every day we're learning, stretching our abilities, learning things that will work, things that don't work. It's just another avenue of creativity."
Designing a float is hardly simple. Looks are obviously important, Haws said, but underneath the flower paper and paint, the float must be stable and safe.
The team started out with a basic motorized platform about three weeks ago. Then, the main pieces of the float were fitted and attached with chicken wire, wood and anything else they could think of.
To create the two giant hands of the magician, each about 6 feet wide, they first traced their own hands, worked out how big they needed to be in proportion to the head, and then hand sculpted each finger and both palms from massive slabs of Styrofoam.
The face was created much the same way. Some of the surface is painted, other parts are covered with floral paper. Almost everything is coated with glitter.
"We use thousands of pounds of glitter. If you look down, that's all you'll see," McClure said, pointing to the shop floor. "We're always covered in glitter."
After days of work, there were still alterations.
"Some days we wonder why we're into this, but it's just what we like to do," he said. "We're freaks. We do all that work for that moment when you watch it go down the road. It's an adrenaline rush."
E-mail: alorimer@desnews.com