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Reuse the News: Create art

One way to use your well-read copies of the Goldstream News Gazette is to use them for an art project
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Coast Collective director Terri Rodstrom shows art made with old newspapers

One way to use your well-read copies of the Goldstream News Gazette is to use them for an art project and give them a second life.

Terri Rodstrom, a director at Coast Collective, said making art out of papier-mâché is easy, fun and a great way to use old newspapers.

“You can go three dimensional with newspapers, when you’re talking art. Sky’s the limit,” Rodstrom said. “Whatever you’re imagination can help you create with wire and cardboard and newspaper.”

For a school production of The Lion King at Lakewood elementary school, Rodstrom helped to make masks for the actors and she chose to make them out of papier-mâché. She created all sorts of animals, such as hyenas and lions, using a bicycle helmet as a base and cardboard or chicken wire as the structure for the papier-mâché.

To make papier-mâché, take a small amount of water, add a little flour and mix them together into a sticky paste. You then cut or shred newspaper into one-inch strips. Dip the newspaper strips into the paste one at a time, and apply them to whatever base structure you’ve built.

It’s good to layer the newspaper and it’s preferable to let one layer dry somewhat before applying the next.

“It is time consuming and it’s not something you can usually do in one day,” Rodstrom said. “The stronger you want it, the more layers you put on.”

Rodstrom said many high-end artists, and especially sculptors, will use papier-mâché to try out an idea before going on to use bronze or whatever medium it is they work in.

 

Piñatas are also made out of papier-mâché and are great for parties. You fill a balloon with candy, blow it up and apply papier-mâché around the balloon in the shape of an animal, like a fish or a pig.

 

Did you know?

 

n Metchosin organic farmer Dieter Eisenhawer saves his seeds from each harvest. He uses a fermenting process to clean them and then dries them on old issues of the Goldstream News Gazette.