Paper Mache Bowl

I really enjoy crafting, but I find that I have mostly time for knitting and less time for other crafts. This is not a bad thing, I suppose, but sometimes I find that there's a lot of other cool stuff out there that I'm missing. This was one of my fun forays into other crafting fields. I made a paper mache bowl out of newspaper strips and colored magazine, with a metal bowl as my form. I would suggest a rubber bowl instead, because it was fairly difficult to get the dried paper out of the bowl. I would also suggest doing the newspaper layer in the morning, and then pulling the dried paper out of the form the following morning. I don't have the patience for anything like that, though, so I went ahead and pulled it out before it was dry and then had to re-place a couple layers of paper (I don't suggest impatience). 

I used white glue mixed with water, although there's lots of options out there for what you can use.Since I was working out of my book I was kind of following directions, but the directions called for 10 layers of newspaper and 1 of colored paper, and I did 7 of newspaper and tons of colored paper. It also called for wrapping paper on the outside (for a solid color) and magazine on the inside for a more varied look, but I decided to go ahead and do magazine on both the outside and inside. To make the inside interesting, I arranged the strips of red paper in a spiral. I think it gave the whole thing a very interesting look.

If I were to do it again I might look into using a smaller bowl. This one was so big that I'm not sure what the heck to do with it now. I have to find someone to give it to so I can get it out of my closet!