3 little owls

Owls are pretty awesome, and papier mache is another easy medium for crafting (all you need is old newspapers, flour, water, salt and something to cook your glue with, and maybe tape, paint etc, depending on what you want to make).

The recipe i use for the glue:

I boil 2 dl of water in a pan and I mix 1 dl of flour with 1 dl of water until its lump free, and then slowly add the flour mixture to the hot water. I usually whisk at the same time so that it becomes a relatively smooth paste. I sprinkle in a teaspoon or so of salt (to stop mold) and wait for it to cool (usually my patience runs out and i use it while still quite warm...).
You can make the glue thicker or runnier by for example boiling 3 dl of water instead of 2. The important part is how you mix the flour in to get the consistency right. Sometimes my batches fail because i'm not paying attention, but its only a bit of flour and water, so it's no hassle to start again!

So with this glue you can paste the (ripped, i find, is better than cut, since then the paper edges aren't so prominent on the finished piece) newspaper bits on to whatever you want to make. The glue keeps for at least a few days in the fridge, go with your nose on this one (once it starts smelling, you need to dump in the toilet bowl and flush flush away).

For my owls i just randomly scrunched up newspaper pages into balls, used a bit of tape to shape them and started adding the strips of newspaper dipped in the glue. I let the owl dry after every layer, all in all i did about 4-5 layers: the more layers, the sturdier the surface, but waiting for the layers to dry gets pretty frustrating so i sometimes... don't really wait... but you should!

Then i painted them white so I could start to decide where to draw the features. My little owls looked quite two dimensional, so i cut out some ears and beaks from cardboard and taped them on, then papier mached everything together, so that the white base coat goes on evenly and smoothly.

I then drew the features on again to guide with the painting process, nothing was really planned so they all turned out looking different. You could make them all the same but different sizes, which was my initial plan, but my special owls are just fine too! They still need a protective varnish to make the paint more durable, need to put that on my shopping list... As you can maybe see from the photo below, the psychotic pink one suffered a fall so it's ear took a bit of a hit, have to dab a bit more paint on there...!

My mum requested some for herself, so I made her two larger owls for christmas:

Quite... hypnotic....
Note: do not place facing bed.

Ps: Here's a very funny video of a transforming owl! 

Something pretty

(thats a good song by the way, by patrick park)

Ever since i can remember recycling, reusing and many other re- starting words have been high in my i-like-this list.

My cupboards and closets are filled with ... things. Things that normal people throw away (or hopefully recycle). I'm a collector. Of things. Of many things. Of too many things.
I'm not good at throwing things away (maybe that should be another theme for this year... ''you can throw it out''-year) because i can see possibilities and new uses for just about anything.

So my first actual post shall be about this need of mine to see the good in everything. The story begins with toilet paper rolls. Everyone needs them, everyone has them, so why not do something fun with them? And perhaps more importantly, something pretty. I started not putting them in the cardboard recycling almost 2 years ago. I now had many toilet paper rolls.

Even a friend of mine brought me a big bag of rolls (there would've been two bags, but her boyfriend threw them out cos he was sick of them being in the way).

So. Now what?

I tried to look for different things to do with them. Googling only lead to many children's craft sites. I did not want to make toilet paper roll butterflies or penguins.

This was one of the best reuses that i found, but wasn't i wanted at the time. I wanted something on a bigger scale, something to decorate my apartment with. And maybe something a bit simpler to create (i'll post about a warning story for that, my kusudama lamp, which is still only halfway done... but more about that later).

I finally found inspiration on one of my favourite sites, design*sponge, and this is what i made:

I randomly glued these quarter parts of the rolls together and clumsily hung them from a random nail in my living room wall. Not very chic, but easy and fun to do! All you need are the rolls, scissors and glue. I also used some mini clothespins to keep the parts together while the glue dried (only took about 10 seconds of pressure for them to stay put).

About half a year later i decided my foyer needed spicing up, so i painted these formations white and bluetacked them to the ceiling and floor. I think this turned out pretty nice, the shadows they make at night when the lights are on are pretty amazing too.

(They do fall down from time to time, so i keep a blobule (like globule, but blobbular) of bluetack nearby for quick fixes...!)

Aah first blog entry!

After a few years of thinking about starting a blog and being told to start a blog, i've finally decided to do just that. I've always been good at getting ideas but relatively bad a fulfilling them.
It's been 2 years today since my best friend passed away, and in memory of him i thought this would be the perfect day to get something done, to start something new, and to start this years 'you can' theme! (lame, yes, but i'm hoping for effective, i've never had a theme year before, just theme parties, and they're quite fun, so we'll see how this pans out).


My language of choice is English, since its the language i think, dream and swear in, but there might be odd bits and bobs in Finnish too at times (since i live and am from Finland).


I'm not expecting many (or any..) readers, i'll start off with having this as a place where i can collect and keep track of everything i make (or want to make) and do (or want to do)! While i'm not making and doing, i am an unemployed (=poor) student (just entered the masters phase, so I do actually get studying done), so that is where the 'make do' part comes in..


Umm... well, this is getting awkward and weird now since i'm not really writing to anyone in particular, so i will post this now and try and find some photos of things i've done! and made! while making do... hmm ok maybe not everything i write and post has to tie in with the blog title.


Here goes nothing!