Recycled Art

In a post a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had volunteered to teach a class on recycled art.  Since them I have been scouring the internet looking for the perfect project to do in my class.  It had to be easy, quick and stir your creative juices so that the ladies that attend will want to go home and look for other ways to create beautiful things out of materials they would normally throw away.  Not too much to ask, right?  But  I discovered rather quickly that although there are a lot of great projects you can create with recycled materials, finding one that you could complete in 30 minutes was very, very difficult.

That all changed late last night as I was once again online searching for the perfect project.  I stumbled upon this great project at  homemade mamas, which was inspired by Growing Up Creative's post about making wall art using paper towel rolls.  Don't you love how the internet allows so many people to share creativity?  I was very, very intrigued by both of these posts.  Unfortunately, I was also very, very tired.  So I bookmarked the site and went to bed.

This morning I got up and decided to give this project a try before I did anything else.  

I got my materials...

and went to work.

This project is so easy.  You just flatten the paper tube (I'm using toilet paper rolls here), measure and mark your cutting lines...

and cut the tube apart.

Put the cut strips between your thumb and finger, and gently press down to reshape the circles...

and then go to work creating designs...

Before beginning this project, I decided to create some art for this wall of photos.

I love the mix of family pictures on this wall, but have always been a little bugged by these two gaps...

So today I decided to try to create something to hang in those gaps.  My goal is to use the toilet paper rolls to create pieces that look like wrought iron.

After playing with several designs, I settled on this one:

The next step was to pull out my glue gun and start gluing

I was happy with the first one I created, so I cut a few more strips and made another.

I then moved the project outside.  I put my pieces into a box...

And painted them with this paint:

I purchased this paint earlier this month for another faux wrought iron project I have in the works.  I haven't even started that one yet, but was thankful I had this paint.  It is a Indoor Satin Metallic paint that I hoped would give my cardboard a metal look.

I sprayed both sides of the pieces.  The paint only takes about 10 minutes to dry, so this process was pretty quick.

I did have some trouble getting all the edges covered completely.  But I solved that problem by using the over spray and  a cheap craft sponge brush to make touch ups.  And when I was done, I had these:

At this point in the project my husband came outside to see what I was doing.  I showed the two pieces I had just completed.  He asked me where I got them, and was quite surprised when I told him I made them.  He asked me what I made them out of and was amazed when I told him toilet paper rolls.  Standing at a distance he seriously thought they were metal.  I guess that means this project is a success!

So for the cost of some spray paint and a glue stick, I was able to use a recycled toilet paper roll to take my wall from this...

to this...

What do you think?  Can you tell what they are made of?

And not only do I have some new art on my walls, I have some new inspiration.  I plan to spend the next day or two seeing what else I can make out of these paper tubes.   Then I'll finalize my plans for my recycled art class.  It feels good to finally be narrowing in on a plan!