I have seen the beautiful tesselations and wanted to make one myself – That is difficult!
On the photo you see what I could do up until now – but in the instructions it reads: Be patient ;-))
Links:
Make your own Tessellations
Category: Paper
Paper Doilies Stencils
I found a wonderful simple technique for beautiful backgrounds: a tutorial on how to stencil with paper doilies.
Isn’t it great?
At my next shopping i must look for paper doilies ;-))
Links:
Paper Doilies Stencils
Paper Bead Bracelet
Once I saw the beautiful paper bead jewelry at newspaperjewelry.com and was stunned. Then I found a tutorial on how to make a paper bead bracelet at craftster.org with some really good ideas, e.g. to fix the paper beads with hair pins or to coat everything with modpodge.
Just another item on one of my to-do-lists ;-)
Links:
craftster.org: My preferred craft forum
Paper Bead Bracelet
newspaperjewelry.com: Beautiful paper beads jewelry
Papier Mache Recipes
There are many recipes for making papier mache which I still want to try out.
On the photo you see one of my many UFO’s ;-)
It is a wall-vase-to-be, made with tore newspaper stripes and ready to use wall paste.
Links:
At ‘The Papier Mache Resource’ :
Some Advanced Papier Mache Recipes (English)
Take also a look at the other tutorials, the articles and the galleries
More recipes:
(Google search results)
Search for ‘paper mache paste recipe’
Search for ‘papier mache rezept’
Image search for ‘paper mache paste recipe’
Image search for ‘papier mache rezept’
Custom Card Box
As mentioned before you sometimes need a little box.
I found instructions on how-to fold a custom card box which can easily be used as little gift box.
And best of all there is Craig Forbes’ Tuckbox Generator where you can fill in the sizes you want and get a PDF file with your special custom template.
Links:
Custom Card Box
Craig Forbes’ Tuckbox Generator
unikatissima’s entry:
Recycled Card Pillow Box
Nature Paper
Once I found a tutorial on how to make paper from vegetables, but I don’t find back the tutorial (it was at ARD-Buffet, but it seems to be too long ago).
On the photo you see a card made with cucumber paper for a friend for the end of fast.
How to make cucumber paper:
- Cut the cucumber in slices of about 0,5 cm / 0,2 inches.
- Put the slices between two layers of tissue paper.
They must overlap to form a sheet of paper! - Put everything into the microwave and put several plates as weight onto your paper-to-be.
- Heat at a high temperature for about 1 minute.
(Note: Please be careful when using the microwave!) - After 1 minute the tissue paper is wet, you have to change it. Also air the cucumber paper a little bit.
Repeat steps 2 – 5 until the tissue paper stays nearly dry.
Lay between new sheets of tissue paper and between several layers of old newspapers and put some weight on it.
About once a day you must replace the moist tissue paper and newspapers by dry ones.
After 2 – 3 days your cucumber paper is ready for use.
Cucumber seems to be one of the easiest vegetables to be used for paper. You can also use other vegetables, but I haven’t tried them and can’t say, how thick the slices must be and how long it takes.
The paper is real paper: You can write on it, you can cut it and so forth.
Cardboard Weave II
While surfing I found mini or hand-held looms (see links below), which I find very interesting, because 1st I don’t have much place at home and 2nd I know that I don’t weave, I just try it once in a while ;-))
On the photo you see the front and back side of my little woven patch.
I would never actually buy a loom, therefore I made me one from – guess… – yes: cardboard! ;-)
On the photo you see me threading the loom in one direction.
Then I thread my cardboard loom in the other direction.
That’s the way my cardboard loom looks at the back side.
Now I’m weaving in one direction.
And here I’m weaving in the other direction.
After having finished with weaving I crochet an edging to neaten the edge.
The first photo shows back and front side of the finished little piece.
Links:
At Weavettes:
How to weave on a mini loom (English) (via knitting-and.com)
The original site doesn’t exist any more and is now available through webarchive:
At Weavettes:
How to weave on a mini loom (English) (via knitting-and.com)
At eLoomaNation: Big Ideas from Little Looms:
Get ideas what to do with your patches
Get basic woman measurement charts for clothing patterns at the website of Jessica Tromp just as for the Clothes From Crocheted Medaillons
Handspun Newspaper Yarn
I’m always interested in articles about weaving and spinning, even though I neither weave nor spin.
But that is the reason why I was so stunned by the tutorial on how to spin newspapers to yarn.
I really would like to try it – one day ;-))
Links:
Handspun Newspaper Yarn
Folded Paper Strips of Equal Width
Sometimes you need folded paper strips of the same width, when weaving paper baskets e.g., making a magazine purse or perhaps when making accordion folds.
Making those strips can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience – but it can be very fast and easy as well: Once I read somewhere (unfortunately I don’t remember where exactly) that you only have to roll your paper sheet over a dowel and then flat the paper roll.
Easy peasy, isn’t it? ;-)
You need your sheet of paper and a dowel.
I used here one of my giant knitting needles.
Roll your sheet of paper on the dowel.
Pull the dowel out of the roll and flatten the paper roll.
This way you get paper strips which are of the same width over the whole length.
Once I made a bowl like these magazine bowls. I preferred the ends of my paper strips to be thinner then the center, so that everything is about the same width everywhere.
Roll your sheet of paper diagonally on the dowel.
The paper roll gets longer, but the ends are thinner than the center.
You can now overlap the strips and create a strong bowl.
Links:
Paper woven basket
Paperweaving Plus
Although I like it, I always considered paper weaving a bit dull. Then I saw Paperweaving Plus (scroll down until ‘Paperweaving Plus’) and found the results fascinating.
I liked especially the not-only-paper-weave which I have to try as soon as possible.
Links:
Paperweaving Plus (scroll down until ‘Paperweaving Plus’)
Weave paper stripes into a sheet of paper (English) (With explaining pictuers)
If you also think, that paper weaving is a little dull, take a look at the flickr results for ‘paper weaving’