Paper bamboo : Excellent idea to recycle paper for craft

Well, we all know you can get paper from bamboo. What about making bamboo from paper :). I get plenty of paper ads in my mail every day and it directly goes to the recycle bin. This idea uses the same paper to create beautiful art. If you are doing this one with kids it also encourages them to recycle. Not to mention this is really inexpensive to make.

You need the following supplies :

- Paper ( Could be from advertisements or regular news paper. The idea is to recycle.)
- Bamboo skewer for rolling the paper ( You can use any similar object like knitting needles)
- Glue
- Scissors/paper knife
- Acrylic paint and paint brush
- Any base for your craft
As shown in pictures roll the sheet of paper using the bamboo skewer and apply glue at the end to secure the paper. Remove the skewer at end of rolling the sheet of paper.
This is the basic technique. Takes less than a minute to roll one and your paper bamboo is ready.

You can use it for many craft projects like pencil stands, flower pots, keepsake boxes,jewelery boxes, photo frames etc.

For illustration I used them to make a rectangular flower vase and accenting few of my photographs. I used a rectangular cardboard box at home for the base. Ready-made unfinished boxes are also easily available at craft stores like Michaels and Jo -Ann.
Simply cut the paper bamboos to the required size and glue them on the base.Keep glue handy when you are cutting the bamboos as the edges might open and you may need to re-secure them with glue. Another way to avoid this from happening is to apply glue few times in between, while rolling the paper instead of applying it just at the end.


Once I glued the bamboos I painted them for a more uniform look though they looked pretty even without the paint :). Let the paint dry and the flower vase is ready to use ( See the picture above). This could be a stationary caddy too!

This is a picture of the photographs I accented using the paper bamboos. I used ribbons to attach the two pictures and to hang them on the wall.