Never One to Waste Paper

C. D. Scallan
by C. D. Scallan
6 Materials
1 Day
Easy
I hate to waste, well anything. When my husband got a package in the mail the other day it was filled with brown packing paper in really long nine or ten inch wide strips. I scooped those up hot quick and in a hurry!
In the back of my mind I vaguely recalled seeing braided paper on an Amazon box. Never one to exactly copy anything (said the queen of the Pinterest fails) I am going to do something a little different.
The first thing I had to do was cut all that paper in to manageable strips about 3 inches wide.
At first I carefully folded each strip into a one inch wide strip for strength before I clipped the ends together with a clothes pin and began to braid. I worked with six foot long pieces and it took several hours just for this process. Towards the end of braid, I was no longer lovingly folding but just scrunching the paper in fist in frustration. But hey, it worked all the same icon
I don't know how much paper I started out with but took ten feet of braid to cover the entire outside of this two quart bowl


This is where the fun begins


I recently received this wonderful dye/stain in the mail as gift from Hometalk and since I don't do a great deal of woodworking...I thought: paper =porous surface, why not?!
So I used a craft brush and painted the whole thing with the dye. I then lined it with some leftover fabric scrap I had laying around.
Here it is on my coffee table. I haven't decided yet if I want to keep it or gift it but I love the way it came out and best of all, it didn't cost me a thing.
Suggested materials:
  • Paper packing materials   (Had it)
  • Hot glue gun and glue sticks   (Had it)
  • Elmer's glue stick   (Had it)
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  • DesertRose DesertRose on Apr 12, 2018

    Wonderful tutorial with the Dye!! How did you seal the fabric so it would stay on? Did you glue it? What kind of glue? (if you did). I love you used materials on hand. Beautiful bowl. You can give it to me! ha

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