Handmade Paper Bowls
Make elegant, gallery quality gifts for your whole holiday list for $5 to $20 (total) and stuff you already have in your studio!!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
I can already “feel the love” that will come from this post. Feels good.
It’s that time of year again, and those of us who didn’t get any of that bailout money are probably shuddering at the thought of gift shopping for the holidays.
Have I got an answer for you!
Using an inexpensive - ok, let’s just say “cheap” this time - ingredient, water, and whatever stuff you have around your studio, you can create really elegant and wonderful handmade gifts for everybody on your list (well, the females at least).
These handmade paper bowls are naked and ready for an infinite number of decorating and embellishing ideas.
Who Doesn’t Love a Beautiful Bowl?
Handmade, artistically decorated bowls were among the very first precious items owned by human beings, and they are still valued for their beauty, utility, and symbolism. Life is “just a bowl of cherries” after all, and bowls symbolize blessings, offerings, and abundance.
So, whether given to someone filled with something wonderful (cookies? art supplies? good wishes? cherries?), or empty and ready to be filled by the recipient, a bowl is an absolutely perfect gift - especially if it is handmade and decorated by you.
You can make them all sizes, all quantities, and all full of imagination from a familiar school kid product that will only cost you $20 for a 5 lb bag! And you won’t even make a mess ( but you can make a mess if you want to - it’s fun!).
Celluclay
This stuff has been around forever in its gray, clunky incarnation, and is available everywhere - craft stores, art stores, online. The one pound package will cost $5 - $6 and will make quite a few small bowls. The five pound bag for $20 would probably be all you need for lots of larger bowls or a long gift list.
The best thing is that Celluclay now comes in white!
What Else You Need:
Water, some bowls to use for armatures, some non-stick cooking spray like Pam, a zip lock freezer bag or a Cool Whip bowl or some such, Saran Wrap or similar. A misting water bottle or old hairspray bottle filled with water is optional but nice to have, and a butter knife or your bone folder.
Putting a whole tutorial in a blog post is clumsy, so we are using some new technology here. Right-Click the Step-by-Step Photos link below to get our photo page for this project to open in a new window - so you can see the photos while reading the expanded instructions below:
The captions for the photos are brief, but I will embellish upon them here - referencing the photos and steps by number:
Steps
1. The Celluclay is compressed into a block so you have to break off pieces and crumble them into a bowl. If you have a dust allergy, protect yourself with a dust mask. It is dry and dusty, but non- toxic.
2. Dribble water into the dry Celluclay and mix slowly until it is all moistened. Use your hands or a spoon. Knead and add more water as needed. As for amounts of water, the package has suggestions, but I just go by the consistency of the clay. This stage can produce dust if done in a bowl, so an option is to do all your mixing and kneading inside a freezer bag.
3. The clay is ready when it has the consistency of cookie dough or pie dough and is moist all the way through. Roll it into a ball and put it in the center of a piece of Saran Wrap you have spread on your (smooth) work surface (I use a sheet of cardboard as a work surface).
4. Place another sheet of Saran on top and squish the ball down.
5. Pat the clay out into a circular shape. Usually the size of the rim of your armature bowl plus 3-4 inches is a good diameter.
6. Use a glass or rolling pin (or glue bottle!) to smooth out the circle to approximately 1/8 inch thick.
7. Spray Pam on the outside surface of your armature bowl. Try to choose a bowl with a smooth bottom and without raised trade names, footers, etc. Any such markings will impress the clay. Remove the top piece of Saran and set aside. Put your hand under the bottom piece - and the clay - and pick up the clay circle. Turn it over and drape it over your armature bowl which is turned upside down. There is no Saran between the clay and the bowl because it would put wrinkles on your bowl’s inside - and we know how we all hate wrinkles!! The reason for the Pam spray was to keep the clay from sticking to the bowl.
8. Leave the Saran in place and smooth the clay to the shape of the bowl. Try to smooth out the excess so your thickness remains uniform. Work the excess clay down and out beyond the edge of the bowl.
9. Remove the Saran Wrap and mist the clay with water as you smooth it with your hands.
10. Trim away the excess from the rim by pulling the clay away with your fingers, This will give you an attractive, torn paper edge which you may want to keep for some of your bowls.
11. For a smooth edge, use a bone folder or butter knife to cut and smooth the clay along the bowl’s rim.
DRYING
Here’s where patience comes in. These take days to dry thoroughly and you should keep an eye on them as they do. That’s why we are making them in October!
Clay warps when both surfaces do not dry at the same pace. This is why you don’t make the bowl using the inside of your armature bowl. The exposed surface would dry more quickly and collapse your bowl inward.
You may find your clay bowl “removing” itself from the armature bowl by shrinking upward. If that starts to happen, remove the clay bowl and set it inside the armature bowl so the inside dries faster for awhile. But keep checking on the bowls as they dry. If you catch a warp while the clay is still damp, put it back on the upside down armature bowl again for awhile (it won’t fit like it used to but just sitting on there will help the bowl regain its shape).
DECORATING
The sky’s the limit. You can go for the look of paper maché and use gesso, acrylic paints and varnishes. Or you can draw all over it. Or use interesting finishes like instant rust. Or stain it with Silk Dyes or paint it with fabric dyes. Get out all that great “stuff” in your studio and go to town. Try a polymer clay mosaic surface. Drill holes in the bowl and attach twigs, wire, beads, etc. Make a bunch of small bowls so you can try all sorts of techniques.
And here’s a wet tip: mix dry fabric dye or liquid silk dye into the water that you add to the clay. Dyes work better than paints because they saturate the fibers that are in Celluclay.
Have fun making bowls and let us see some of the beauties you come up with!
