We come across newspaper everyday right from reading to packing in home, office, hotels, etc. Most of our mornings begin with a sip of coffee and a news paper. But it’s not just for knowing news or packing things as we think. Our ancestors had made containers, boxes, thorans and bells out of it using a technique called “PAPER MACHE”.
In 15th century this was started in Kashmir which was brought by Muslims from Persia. This container can be used in kitchens for storing spices, pen stand, cell phone holder, etc. According to your end use the shape of the container can be made. Basically there are two methods involved which are dry and wet. I would teach you the conventional wet method today. The ingredients are changed here according to the availability and feasibility of the materials. Before starting off with the work let’s see what materials we require for doing it.
You need to have….
- Few News papers
- A Small container to prepare pulp
- Hot Water to immerse news paper
- Fevicol or Glue
- Plastic Container which acts as a mold
- Coconut oil or any oil
- Acrylic paints
- Paint brushes
So yeah! Let’s begin.
To create…..
- Tear 4 to 7 full sheets of news paper into small bits.
- Fill the container with hot water and immerse newspapers in it and let it stay for whole night.
- Mix the paper well inside the water as shown in the picture below.
- Next morning filter the water and add hot water again and let it stay for half a day.
- Repeat this for every half day to get better results. This may take around 2 days to get a proper pulp and it has to be in a semi-solid consistency as shown in the picture below.
- Every time when the newspaper is filtered try to smash the pulp by hand. This makes you to proceed with your work smoothly.
- Now mix Fevicol to the pulp. The ratio must be 2:1 where 2 is newspaper and 1 is Fevicol.
- Next take the plastic container having shape that your final product wants to look like.
- Apply just two drops of oil on the outer surface of container. This is to avoid sticking of pulp to the container as we had added Fevicol in it.
- Now take the pulp and spread over the surface and hold it on hand for few minutes until you make sure that the pulp won’t drip down.
- Generally the pulp won’t drip if a proper semi solid consistency is maintained.
- Now let it dry whole night as shown below. For better results make it dry on sunlight.
- Once the pulp is fully dry slowly remove your product from the plastic container.
- You can also let it dry for one more day under sunlight to make it better stronger.
- Now paint it using acrylic paints as you like. Since it is traditionally made I have used royal blue and golden colour.
- Similarly photo frames, Mask, Thorans, Book Mark and Book covers can be made.
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