News Paper Crafts : Paper Bells

In my earlier post on Dastkar exhibition, I told you I got few ideas for paper crafting. What I am sharing today is not something new, many people have done it before. Here is the tutorial on paper bells. Don't go by the number of steps, they are simple to do.

Firstly begin with making sticks/reeds from the newspaper. This is bit tough for beginners and you may get sticks of varying sizes initially. But practice makes man perfect. I learnt finally to make uniform and thin reeds. My learning tip here would be don't stop in between. Finish doing your reeds all at once.
Make 4 vertical strips out of one sheet of news paper. Begin rolling at one corner of the paper. Place at an angle and start rolling over the skewer  till you reach the opposite corner. In between you have to pull your skewer slightly out of your roll. At the end of rolling put a drop of glue/fevi stick. Here is a video for this step.

Once you have enough sticks, flatten them by rolling them over a pencil.

Take a thin skewer, in my case I used my knitting needle and started rolling tightly my first flattened stick. At the end of the roll apply glue and hold it for five minutes.

To create the slightly dome shape, slowly push the circle from side by side, all sides. Don't over do it, else the roll may come off.

Start attaching the second roll, to this basic roll. Start gluing at half of the strip. I used totally three strips to make a bell.

 

After the bell is made, apply a coat of glue/fevicol to the bell.

 

Now comes the fun part. Color these bells with colors of your choice. I used acrylic colors and I gave very thin coat both inside and outside. This is to retain the newspaper print on the bells(People should know that they are made of newspaper isn't it?).

 

For the beads, I took shilpakar Epoxy based clay and made beads out of it. I took this because I wanted the beads to be bit heavy compared to the weight of the bells. They are very easy, just follow the instructions on the box. As soon as you make beads make a hole using toothpick. Let them dry for few hours.

 

The final part of putting all your efforts together. I took a chord which I had bought to make bracelet(which never happened -:))) Start stringing your bell and beads alternatively. In order to retain them in place, tie a knot and another two on the same knot. This is to make the knot big enough. This may be not clear, but you will know.

 

 

 You can even use these bells for making torana for your main door..

 

 

 

Update : Add this craft to December  link-up at Just Keep on Creating