Papercraft is a term that describes crafts that are made with paper that are typically artistic. Paper can be cut, rolled, painted, or glued to create these artistic crafts. My favorite time to work on all my crafts is when I am watching television and relaxing. I feel fulfilled when I am creating. My favorite paper crafts include paper beads, paper pendants, paper-bottle cap magnets and pins, and bookbinding.
Paper Beads
I discovered paper beads while searching for crafts on YouTube. I like that this craft is simple, inexpensive, and easy to do at home. I enjoy selecting papers and seeing how they look when they are rolled into beads. Unfortunately, some of the papers I choose don’t look as good as I hope when they are rolled. As a result, I’ve gone back to those YouTube videos to pay closer attention to the tips they gave for choosing good paper for rolling. What I learned is that getting papers with contrasting colors in their patterns is very important to the appearance of the final bead. Other options for choosing a paper that will make a good-looking bead is a solid color, ombre colors, or large stripes of colors. I’ve had good luck with resulting beads when using any of these types of papers.
Another important thing to consider when choosing a paper is the thickness, as it will affect the shape of your final bead. I personally prefer to make oval ½-inch beads with a thicker cardstock, and small round ¼-inch beads with thinner children’s book pages. When I started rolling the children’s book pages, I started with the ½-inch oval triangles, but I didn’t especially like the look of them. That’s when I tried cutting them into ¼-inch triangle strips instead and found that I liked the look of those rolled beads much better.
Paper Pendants
The paper pendant is another craft I stumbled upon while searching the Internet for a new papercraft. What I like so much about this craft is the opportunity it provides to reuse food packaging that would otherwise end up at the dump. For this project, I use my 1-inch hole punch to punch out circles of food packaging that are about the thickness of a piece of cardstock paper for the base of the pendant and 1-inch circles of cardstock paper that will serve as the final design of the pendant. The resulting pendant is not only fun to look at and wear, but it is a craft that helps the environment.
I am such a fan of this paper craft, that I find myself eyeing food packaging around my home to determine its potential to become a pendant. Also, I find punching the holes out of the packaging relaxing and a mindless enough thing that I can do while watching television or while waiting between the steps of making dinner.
Paper Bottle Cap Magnets and Pins
I found these crafts because I was looking for a way to reuse the large bucket of bottle caps I have saved from beverages over the years. This craft also involves using my 1-inch hole punch on the cardstock paper I want to display in the bottle cap.
These crafts are the least time consuming, but perhaps the most frustrating due to having to remove the rubber seal adhered to the inside of each bottle cap. While I have managed to remove these from several bottle caps so far, it is rarely a simple task. I found many methods online for removing these. So far, I’ve tried removing them with brute force and pliers, and I’ve tried soaking them in rubbing alcohol for a few minutes in hopes of dissolving the adhesive. Neither of these methods works perfectly for all types of bottle caps. I came across two other methods that I am going to try soon. The first is soaking them in acetone for about 5 minutes to dissolve the adhesive from the rubber seal. The second is boiling several at a time in a pot of water, pulling them out one-at-a-time as the seal starts to look loose, and removing the seal then, while it is still hot. I’ll post an update when I try these methods to let you know how they work out.
The main difference between the bottle cap magnets and pins I make (besides the backings) is that I use a cabochon on top of the magnets and Judikins Diamond Glaze on top of the pins. I do this to keep the pins as light as possible as people will be wearing them on their clothes, bags, or purses. It also shortens their profile so they are less likely to come in contact with something that will rip them off or break them.
Bookbinding
Bookbinding was the first papercraft I came across. What I love about bookbinding is the long process and varying steps throughout, for example, sewing, folding, gluing, and cutting. Also, I enjoy the variations available for binding and covers. Further, I like the practicality of making books that can be used for creating art or jotting notes and that it’s possible to make artistic versions as well. I started out making unlined notebooks and eventually moved on to printing lines on paper to make lined notebooks. I’ve also made sketchbooks and art books with drawing paper and watercolor paper. As for covers, most of the covers I’ve made came from cardstock, but I’ve also used decorated shelf liner and used food packaging, such as candy boxes, soda boxes, garlic bread boxes, and popcorn boxes. I like that this is another type of project that lends itself to helping the environment. These make great gifts, and I have given them out to friends and family for birthdays and holidays.
AlteredPapercraft Podcast
My Favorite Paper Crafts
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