I’ve been searching for a small vintage shelf for an
assemblage piece I’m designing. I’ve
spent too much time looking for that perfect piece that was in my vision. Then when I found a shelf that had the
aesthetic I wanted, it was too expensive.
I had to come up with a new idea to get my shelf. I decided to make it from paper mache. After all, you can make almost anything with
paper and glue. Here are the pros: I was able to make the shelf resemble the
shelf in my sketch. It was easy to make,
light weight, and free by using paper and glue I already had. It did take a few days to make it, but that
was a small investment in time when compared to the time I spent shopping for a
shelf.
After I finished the paper mache shelf, I painted it with
brown acrylic paint. I allowed the brown
paint to dry and covered the shelf, section by section, with Folk Art Crackle
Medium. I followed the crackle medium
with an off-white acrylic paint. The beauty of this process is that the crackle medium camouflaged the paper mache finish. I then glued scrapbook paper on the inside and have just started adding texture.
Here's my first layer of texture I added to the scrapbook paper using a stencil
