YES, I made it myself: Constructing Molds

OJ House

The OJ House still curing.

At my last selling event, once again, someone asked: “Did you really make that yourself, by hand? Well, how did you do that?” Sometimes folks don’t believe that I DO actually create the papercrete items I sell, from the design, the molds, to the painting and finishing of each piece. This post will be a step-by-step breakdown of a custom miniature house to show the amount of work involved in just creating the molds.Continue reading

Crafting With Recycled Aluminum Cans

Windflower Collection

Windflower Collection

This is a continuation of an earlier post: Repurposing aluminum drink can to the max! I want to explain in more detail a few of the crafts I’ve made along with some tips for repurposing aluminum drink cans. Some crafts need specific equipment, others may be created with everyday household items. There are many YouTube videos, Instructables, and Internet crafting tutorials about how to deconstruct an aluminum drink can, so I won’t reinvent the wheel here. However, I do have a few suggestions that might make the chore a little easier.Continue reading

Experimenting With Cement Soaked Cloth

Draped Vase curing

Draped Vase shown while still curing. Papercrete was added later to the inside and outside of the base for better support and balance.

I’m having way too much fun with cement-soaked towels to work on anything else at the moment. I’ve made draped vases, miniature fairy houses, funky steampunk looking flowers, and have a few more ideas I want to try before I work this obsession out of my system. So, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned while experimenting.Continue reading

Busy, Busy! – forming hardware cloth miniatures

Fairy Throne Set

This 1/2″-scale fairy throne set was handmade from wire mesh hardware cloth, Swarovski gem, gold-tone beads, Fantasy Film, polymer clay, and paint.

I’ve been extremely busy the last couple months (good for me), so I’m just getting back to blogging! I promised in my last blog post to create a couple of tutorials. There was one to be on forming hardware cloth and another on using recycled asphalt shingles for miniature garden accessories.Continue reading

Catching Up . . .

Papercrete Dew Drop Fairy House

Baby Box became “Dew Drop”. After painting, she was embellished with aluminum soda can cutouts for window frames and round leaves for the potted tree. A pull-tab, screen, and wires form the front door. A plastic end cap was cut down to create a pot for the twisted scrap wire tree, and crushed lava rock dust was added for the pot mulch.

I’ve had the flu and been out of commission the last few weeks, so I’m taking a day to catch up the Blog with the papercrete fairy house projects.  Some of the fairy houses were pretty cut-n-dry to develop. They were hand formed over disposable food containers, un-molded after set, dried, painted, and embellished.Continue reading