Art at the Library: March 3rd

Recycled Paper/Magazine Art: Making Functional objects

Today we will be discussing the use of recycled materials in art, and how making functional objects can be an art form. In many countries across the world, people use recycled materials to make art and objects.

Today, we are making paper beads, and paper bowls out of magazines.

Beginning of the paper bowls!

Here are the steps with images on how to do it.

Supplies! Recycled magazines, mod podge, foam brushes, and I have a clear poly spray paint also.

Gather supplies.

Paint the entire page with mod podge. Be mindful that whichever side you want facing out, should be facing down.

Choose a colorful magazine page and lay it horizontally in front of you & your student. Paint the BACK side of the image you want facing out.

Start by folding from the bottom (about 1/4 inch) and fold all the way to the top.
(Process photo, crease each time you fold to help thickness and stability.)
When you’ve rolled it all the way to the top, you should have something that looks like this.

Paint this with mod podge also, then you will roll it up really tight in a spiral. You will and should have glue all over your fingers and hands! It’s a little messy but the more mod podge you use at this stage, the more you can mold and press the base of the pot into the shape you want it to hold as.

Paint with mod podge and then roll into a spiral.
Mod podge dries pretty quickly, so it should hold pretty well after a few minutes of pressing around it.

This is the base of your bowl. Now, I made a very small one for demonstration purposes, but you would just continue to wrap in a spiral using the above steps with new pieces of magazine paper and add it to the existing spiral.

To build your bowl up, you just spiral it up or you can add individual circles of the magazine paper.

In this example I spiraled my paper up about 1/8 of an inch each time I went around the base of the bowl, making it taller.

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