Making a recycled magazine bowl

After reading this book I decided that I needed to figure out something to do that would make me excited.  People keep bringing up ideas of things for me to do with the volunteers that are out of my comfort zone, or sound like things that make me want to crawl into a hole, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.  Because I want to be awesome at my job.  And I want to be awesome for them.  And I knew I needed something that I could get excited about in order to do both.  

So I started "Art Hour"

Every Thursday for an hour I invite the volunteers to join me in the dining room with nice music and lighting while we create something artistic that has been on my list of "things to try" for a long time now while eating snacks and drinking red wine.  Not everyone joins in the "creating", but it is surprising how many people just come to enjoy the good snacks, conversation and atmosphere.  I get to do all of these things in a designated space with people I love spending time with.  

This week we made recycled paper bowls.  It was time consuming - the finished product took me about 3 hours (with a lot of breaks in there).  The most time consuming part was picking out the sheets of magazine to put in our bowls to create good mojo.  For instance...

NOT good mojo.  Scary - and not in my bowl.

Good mojo.  Horatia from CSI Miama is the bomb diggity.  Def in my bowl.

Try to use all sheets from the same size magazine so that your folds are consistent. 

First, fold the sheet in half.

Then unfold it and fold each edge into the center.

This ensures that the folds are consistent on every sheet.

Keep folding into the center.

And again.

I folded in until I couldn't fold anymore, although I encouraged the volunteers to stop one step before me because it looked just as good, and was easier to manage. 

Then glue and fold your folds together.

Next, your going to add glue to the entire length (it gets messy) and the roll it around like a cinnamon roll.  Keep going out until you have the width of the bottom you want.  Once you have that, then gradually start going up the side of the bowl, and little bit higher every time. 
Like this.

 

Then keep going until your finished.  Once done I slathered mine in glue overnight.  I also used clothespins to hold a lot of things in place, and I recommend them.  The next day you could actually varnish it, which would be nice and give it a finished look. 

  

Tonight we're making block-printed scarves and fabric.  Should be fun. :)