DIY Paper Mache Bowl- EASY!

 I love the look of paper mache bowls, however, they can be a bit pricey. When I first started looking for ways to make my own, I found a lot of very long, very extensive, and very messy ways to make them that seemed a little daunting. I knew I didn't want to make a flour paste- too messy. I also knew I didn't want to use my blender- again the mess. 

So here is the easiest paper mache bowl! You can also find a full video tutorial on my YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/hA7QBikRCO0

Start with some shredded paper. I used some paper straight out of my paper shredder, but if you don't have a paper shredder, you can just tear up some paper into tiny pieces. Don't worry about the color of the paper either! We're gonna paint our bowl at the end!

Then I poured hot water over my paper. Make sure that you cover your paper completely then use you hand or a spoon to make sure all the little pieces are submerged into the water. Let this sit for a few hours. I left mine for around 5 hours, but you can go longer if you'd like.

Once you're ready to start your bowl, grab a bowl you have (whatever size you plan to make), flip it upside down onto some wax paper. Then cover the entire thing with plastic wrap. You can lightly coat your plastic wrap with a bit of vegetable/olive oil if you want to help the removal process be a little easier. I skipped this step however, and it still lifted off the plastic wrap fairly easily.

Squeeze out about 90 percent of the water from your shredded pieces. You can use cheesecloth for this or even a sifter, but I found it pretty easy to just do this part with my hand just squeezing little balls of the paper at a time and then transferring them to another bowl as I did it.

At this point in the process, a lot of tutorials call for a blender to shred the paper finer. If you're looking for a smoother finish, then go ahead and blend the paper. I like texture though so again, I skipped that part.

Now for the fun part! Add some regular white school glue into your paper shreds. I didn't measure this part, but I ended up using just about 90 percent of a small bottle of school glue

Then you're going to grab some joint compound (some people refer to this as spackling). I bought a small container of spackling from Dollar Tree and used 3/4 of the container for my bowl.

You'll want to mix this all up really good with your hand. If you mix it and you are not able to form a ball with it, you might need to add a little more white glue.

you'll know it's ready when you can clump it in your hand and it sticks together nicely.

Start at the top (which is actually the bottom) of the bowl and start adding chunks of your paper clay to shape the bottom of your bowl. Make sure you are pressing the paper clay well! 

Continue adding balls of paper over the sides of your bowl. With each handful of clay you add, be sure to press it firmly and make sure you push it into the previous bit you did. Use your whole hand to flatten and shape it around your bowl. Then you'll want to let this dry for at least 5 days! It can take longer depending on the humidity and where you put it to dry. Try to leave it in a dry area.

I made the mistake of trying to move mine on day 3 and lost quite a few little pieces from the rim of my bowl so patience is definitely key!!

Here is my bowl after day 5. You can see the little pieces missing at the rim due to my lack of patience. Once it was completely dry though, I was able to kind of wiggle off of my plastic wrapped bowl pretty easily.

As you also may have noticed, my paper shreds were a variety of colors so the final step was to paint my bowl. I used chalk paint in the color plaster by Waverly. You can make yours any color you want though!