papier mache bowls

Indian summer crafting is, I think, made for papier mache. 

You can go fancy with chicken wire, snips, wallpaper paste and such. These are just flour, water, salt and local paper. 

And none the worse for it.

The paste is one part flour to five parts water and a tablespoon of salt stirred on a medium heat. The bowls were covered in cling film first, and you need at least four layers.

Also helpful would be some sun. The weather last week was not great, so these bowls took about four days to dry. When they were finally dry they suffered a bit of collateral damage coming out of the bowls as I had to slip a knife in between the bowl and the papier mache to get them out, but this got covered up at the decorating stage. Perhaps putting a bit of vaseline on the cling film first would have helped.

We all loved this stage: watered down PVA in abundance and torn up strips of pretty paper to cover up the newspaper and mend any tears.

A lot of fun, and such a great project for kids. On this occasion if I am being honest the fun was mainly mine, as attention spans seemed especially short. 

Perfect for collections and collectors of any age.