What can you make …

with a 4mm dowel, lots of newspaper, and some masking tape?

Yes, it was Contemporary Textiles Workshop again – although as A. said, there didn’t seem to be many textiles involved. [Is paper a textile?]

The answer, of course, is some of these. Roll the newspaper round the dowel on the diagonal, starting at one corner, and fasten with masking tape. A. got those lovely stripes all over hers but as I was using a more downmarket paper I only got a few of them.

So what can you do with giant fire lighters? Well, you can wrap them with eyelash yarn and weave embroidery thread through them. No, I’m not sure why either, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

 

 

 

Or you can stick the ends together with more masking tape, and plait them.

 

And then you can do this – you can see my basket weaving skills are not what they might be …

 

 

or you can do this. No idea what, if anything, I’ll do with him. I'm not a great one for figurative work – art dolls and stuffies do very little for me – but I rather like this little chap.

He reminds me of this big chap. [And the giant firelighters remind me of these.]

The paper tubes are surprisingly strong and pretty rigid, and I thought it was an interesting technique, which of course I had to experiment with.

On of the few advantages of insomnia is that you can get up and try out all those ideas that are buzzing round your head. [Of course the insomnia may well be due to all those ideas buzzing round your head…]

These were made about 2 a.m., using magazine pages, rather than newspaper.

One of the disadvantages of rolling on the diagonal is that the ends have fewer layers than the middle and are a bit feeble, so I tried rolling with the dowel parallel to one side.  They were a little harder to get started that the diagonal ones, but not impossible. I ran a glue stick over the last couple of centimetres to hold them together, because I wasn’t too keen on the masking tape. And of course, although the wrapping isn’t compulsory, it helps to hold them together. The result was neat, shiny, firm tubes.

These are pages from a clothes catalogue. The photos all seem to feature backgrounds in shades of beige, so I ended up with this rather interesting coffee and cream look. Come to think of it, the clothes were pretty beige too, which is why the catalogue got recycled!

I think these may get some beads – and then I need to find out how to fix them together. One of the disadvantages of rolling parallel to the sides is that the ends are the same thickness as the middle so you can’t overlap them to bind them together. And although they are hollow, I don’t have any sewing needles long enough to get a thread through them. I may have to resort to wire – or dangling a needle on a long thread and hoping it goes through …

And finally –here’s something I made earlier.  Can you work out what I used to stamp this flower? It wasn’t a flower, or a leaf, but I bet many of you have one of then  in your house right now.

Answer next time – if I remember.