Paper Pottery

Yesterday I had the pleasure of delivering my ‘Paper bowl’ (or as it was renamed yesterday ‘paper pottery’), workshop as part of Meldreth Primary Schools Family Day.

The day’s events were a storming success with families taking part in numerous FREE workshops at the school as part of the annual family day. The activities included, street dance, geometric dome making, car making, pop up cards, creative writing and making bath bombs –not forgetting paper bowls of course!

The paper bowls is a fantastic, quick, easy and affordable project, that once you have learnt the basic technique, the possibilities are endless. I took along some of my sculptures from the ‘Journey and Cells’ exhibition to inspire participants, displaying some of the varied shapes and objects you can create using this technique.

What I like about this activity is that it is an affordable activity that families can carry out at home on the kitchen table with limited resources. All you need to create your own bowl is newspaper, a glue stick and something to roll the paper with. We experimented with 3 different objects yesterday, a ruler, a thin plastic tube and a thicker plastic tube, you can see the results below.

 Rolling the newspaper, you can see some of my sculptures from the 'Journeys and Cells exhibition in the background

 Working together to create the newspaper coil

Gluing the end of the newspaper coil together 

 Voila finished bowls ready for painting

 To paint the bowls we used acrylic paint. This carries out a couple of important jobs.

 Firstly it bonds the shape of the bowl, acting like a glue. If you do not want to

paint your bowl you can always coat it with PVA glue which dries clear.

Secondly the acrylic paint gives the bowl a nice sheen and professional finish.

 All of the children and families that attended the workshop worked well together and seemed to really enjoy making their bowls. Here are some lovely pictures of the children taking their time and concentrating on painting and decorating their bowls

 If you look closely you can see the bowl to the right has a really interesting shape,

kind of like a sombrero

 This stunning bowl has been embellished with some paper stamped out butterflies,

what a lovely finish!

 I am always surprised at how imaginative and creative children and young people are when taking part in creative activities. You can see that this bowl was made using thicker roles of paper, making a more cone shaped bowl. I love the way that this young lady turned her bowl into a Christmas tree. What a fantastic idea!

The design was completed by adding a range of stamps out shapes from coloured paper for Christmas tree decorations.

 One proud artist standing infront of the bowls he made with his mother, but what is that in the background?

 And I was not the only one there using newspaper. Check out the fantastic Geometric domes.

Newspaper is a free resource which is very underated as a art medium. These domes were made in one of the many workshops taking place in the school as part of the family day. In this workshop families put on their problem solving heads and used newspaper to make these amazing geometric domes.

Some of the amazing bowls made througout the day

If you would like to find out more about the paperbowls workshops or to discover the diverse range of workshops, art projects, staff training or activities available for your school, club, organisation, please contact me on lisamart@hotmail.co.uk