Make A Paper Mâché Easter Basket With Stephen Brown | Glitterville Studios | Handmade Holiday

hey guys i’m stephen from glitterville where every day is a holiday but today we’re celebrating dolly’s favorite easter on hgtv’s handmade holiday series so let’s hop to it [Music] when most people think paper mache you automatically think that you want to tear strips of newspaper and that’s for me the worst way to start because you get newsprint on your hands and it’s just a big sticky mess so i’m going to show you how to make a paper mache that’s almost like clay to get started you’re going to need a bowl of warm water and one roll of bathroom tissue i’m going to take and wrap off some some wads of the bathroom tissue and put it in the bowl of hot water because we want to measure the amount we’re using and we need two and a half cups of wet bathroom tissue and we’re going to put it into the measuring cup and you’re going to squeeze out some water okay so in a larger bowl dump it in and then slowly take it out of the bowl tear it a little bit and add it back to the water because we want the water to break it down almost completely so you can’t even tell it’s still paper now i’m going to take my strainer put it into the water and start pushing some of the water out because we want the tissue to be drier but not too dry so here’s my ball i’m going to pour the extra water out we’re going to put it into the bowl and i’m going to crumble it back up with my hands and now i’m going to add to it one and a half cups of white glue now i know you’re probably thinking but paper mache is usually a flower paste and that works too glue is just a little friendlier but if you only have flour you can use flour and then two cups of joint compound now this is the stuff that you see being plastered on the wall to fill cracks when you’re building a house we really want our mixture to be creamy so for that we’re going to need a mixer so just put in your beaters and start beating it just like anything else you would mix in the kitchen now i usually have about a cup of flour set to the side and i’m going to put a little bit into the mixture but not very much this will give it just a little bit of body okay so my mixture looks pretty good at this point so i’m going to clean off my beaters set that aside and now i need to cover my bowl with some plastic wrap just to keep it fresh and moist while we’re working on the other part of the project the next thing we’re going to need is an armature and what’s an armature it’s essentially like our skeleton that holds us up i’m going to start with a medium-sized plastic bag that i’m going to fill with 8 cups of uncooked rice once the rice is in the bag i’m going to squeeze out the air and roll down the top and then secure it with a little bit of tape and that closes up the bag but now we want to make the shape a little more like what we want the finished item to be so i’m going to take a little more tape and i’m going to do a criss-cross across the top so from this corner to that corner and turn my bag and from that corner to this corner and the corners of the bag i’m sort of poking in so it rounds them flip the bag over poke in the corners and tape it again the same way i’ve got a cardboard tube that i’ve cut a link about two inches deep in and i’m going to position that right on top i’m going to take a little bit of tape and tape this to the ball and we’re ready to start adding paper mache i’m going to brush this all around the collar at the top and then once you’ve done all around the collar you can start spreading down the ball once you get about halfway down we can flip it over to do the other half i want the bottom to be somewhat rounded and then later before the paper mache has dried completely we’ll set it down and the pressure will make it flat enough to sit but still look round once you’ve gotten it the shape that you want you’re going to set it aside and let it dry so now my bucket is dry and it’s time to remove the rice from inside i have a sharp craft knife and i’m going to cut an x across the top so once you’ve poured out all the rice you can reach in and pull out the plastic bag and just work it out of the collar like this so just take your craft knife and go all the way around like that i’m going to take some sandpaper and i like 220 grit and i’m just going to start sanding the bucket see this little ridge here that’s the kind of thing we really want to get rid of and now around the top so that’s nice and smooth and sometimes the cardboard will stay in there perfectly and become the actual surface and sometimes it sort of slips around this one’s sort of 50 50. so i’m not sure in the end oh there’s my answer popped right out it’s time to start adding some features to the bucket this is the original basic and i’m going to add a little bit of flour and i generally just add it to a spot where i want to mix because i want that to be a little thicker clay so i’m going to put two eyes and two cheeks on my rabbit so i’m just going to brush a little bit of water so the paper mache will actually stick when i add it so i’ve got this little tiny ball here i’m going to wet the back of it and i’m going to put it onto the bucket now i’m just going to do another little roll split it in half roll it into a ball and make that the cheeks and don’t forget to re-wet on that area so you have your eye line and then you have the cheeks that are just beyond where you’ve placed the eyes and that gives you your main features for your bucket and now i’m just going to make a little triangle for his nose and put it just in the center and now i want to start blending all of these features to the actual bucket and to do that you need to wet your fingers and start smoothing it on now you want to keep the general shape but you want to blend them into the bucket now this bunny i’m making his eyes open but if you wanted to make them closed you simply take your finger and drag it along the bottom line of the circle that you made for his eye so this bunny needs some ears so i’m going to set him aside and i’ve used some heavyweight cardboard to cut two bunny ears like this this is a fun tip for most craft projects that you want to add a little dimension from flat cardboard or paper and that is to take your craft knife and score it down the center and to score something just means to cut part way just enough so we can bend it and when you bend it suddenly you have options because now we’re halfway there on a curve i’m going to take our very basic paper mache mixture and i’m just going to frost them and you’ll do both sides of the ears and once you’ve done front and back of both ears set them aside to dry so my ears are dry and you can hear how hard they are but they’re a little lumpy and bumpy around the edges from just spreading it with the knife so now i’m going to take a little bit of sandpaper and i’m just going to buff off the edges so you just want to file that off all the way around until they’re nice and smooth so it’s time to add the ears to the bunny and i’ve marked with a pencil where i want them to go and i’m going to use my craft knife to just cut through the paper mache so i can stick the ears into it i’m going to wet my fingers wet the areas around the ears and use a little bit of my paper mache to build it up around it and to actually hold the ears now once you feel like the bunny ears are pretty much secure you need to set this aside and let it dry for a while because that’s what’s going to make it really firm and ready for our next steps of painting and decorating so my bunnies are finally dry and you can see i have a couple of different kinds here this is one that i actually really sculpted the ears on so you can see how rounded they are this one is flatter like the ones we just coated the front and back and sanded the edges and now i’m starting the process of painting i want the ears to be pink inside but i wanted to have sort of a a fun look that when i brush it on it’s sort of pink on one side and cream on the other but i’m just going to take my brush and i’m just going to go up to the ears because it’s pink on one side cream on the other turn my brush and come back down so there’s his ear complete with shading and now for the bucket itself you can see around his eye i have a little bit of shading around his mouth and to do that just put the paint onto your brush wipe off as much as you can and just make little swipes of color i don’t want them to be as as full color as this later so i’m just going to do the same with them i’m going to add a little more color but not too much and then i’m just going to take my brush and spin it around see how that intensifies that pink and you can see how it gives you the perfect cylinder with that little bit of shine like the lights catching it and then all around the bucket i’ll just take the brush and just start scurrying over it and i don’t want it to be too intense so i’m painting the pink and then painting a little cream on top of it okay so i’ve painted my buckets and you can see there’s two clearly different styles here this one is very simple and this one is a little more detailed with purer colors on all the details now to finish it up our basket needs a handle so i’m going to use a piece of 16 gauge wire and some floral tape and i’m just going to wrap the wire from top to bottom now this floral wire is the kind that you buy in a pack and it’s already cut this length and it’s the perfect thing for a bucket handle and remember when you’re applying floral tape to wire you always want to wrap and pull at the same time because it’s that pulling motion that engages the glue that makes it stick to the wire and the best way to bend wire uniformly is to take both ends and then just watch the middle never putting a kink in it but bringing both ends together and i’ve drilled two holes one on either side behind the ears to insert the handle and then bend the ends with your fingers or some pliers i hope you really enjoyed making these easter buckets and that you agree with me that paper mache is the most versatile crafting material in the entire world and if you like this video give us a thumbs up and subscribe to handmade and just remember have fun make it and make every day a holiday [Music]
Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayz7GL3dsYY