An Object Lesson in Crafting - Spiral Coil Bowl

Six hours for spirals.

I know many women crafters.  Everyone of them has a UFO story.  No, not flying saucers.  In crafting, a UFO is an unfinished object.  The object may be unfinished because at some stage it looks as if it will not turn out they way the crafter hoped, or another project may have captured the crafter's attention so the first project was set aside to for "when I get around to it."  However, many projects are not completed because the item is taking so much longer to create than the crafter had thought it would.  It can be difficult to determine at the start just how much time a project will take to complete.  Sometimes projects look simple, but are deceptively time consuming.  Today I am blogging about such a project.  Hopefully, readers can learn something about estimating the time a project will take from this.

It all started when I saw a small bowl made out of paper on Pintrest.  The blog post said it was a good way to recycle magazines.  It looked simple enough.  I thought I could make one.  I did some internet searches to find some instructions on how to make spiral paper art.  There are many methods for making the craft.  During my search, I came across a blog post on someone's spiral paper art frame.  I wish I had saved the link because her post on this was both informative and humorous.  Her project was also a much more child friendly project.  Basically, she said that the project took hours and days longer than she expected.  Since she figured she was not going to talk you out of trying the craft, she went on to describe her technique, which used tape to secure the spirals.  She was probably right.  I should have walked away from this project, but I did not.  This project has becomes the project that has eaten up hours of my time with the end nowhere in sight.  I think if I had started estimating the time from the start, I would have taken her advice.

There were a number of different methods for doing this type of project on the internet.  Taping the spirals, using basic papier mache' techniques, and hot glue to name a few.  I also tried to recycle a magazine as part of the project.  Well, I have recycled most of one magazine.  I think I will take the rest of the magazines to the library because I don't see my making more than one of these bowls.  Anyway, I tried a couple of different methods of construction to see which worked best for me.  More about that below.

Before you begin a project, you need to decide how much mess you can tolerate on a project because that will factor into the time equation.  Some methods of construction can be quicker, but may entail a lot of mess.  Some methods are slower, but aren't as much of a mess.  Cleanup factors into time as well.  I tried the tape method because that seemed like it would be quick.  I did not like the result.  Tape was showing on the parts of the project that would be visible.  I tried a regular papier mache' method.  Trying to spiral the paper left it, my work surface, and me covered in sticky flour paste.  Finally I tried a modified method where I smoothed glue onto the spiral with the tip of a skewer.  That worked well, added the strength of the glue to the card stock, and kept mess to a minimum.  It was not as fast as the other two, but I think that overall, it looked better than the tape without as much mess as the flour paste.  It just takes longer.  I also found that coiling the paper into a spiral in advance helped make it easier to create the spiral when you were dealing with the glue.

To start with, the spirals are made of paper, but quilling paper was too thin at 1/8 inch.  I felt that I needed each spiral to be about a quarter inch deep to have enough strength to hold up to several levels of spirals glued on top of each other.  And regular magazine paper was a little flimsy.  I decided to try making the spirals out of card stock.  I cut 12 x 12 inch card stock from  coordinating colors into 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) strips.  I tried to cut three sheets of card stock at once with a craft knife and ruler (Using scissors did not make as even a cut), but three sheets at a time did not work very well.  It worked much better using only two sheets at a time.  Turns out that it took about eighteen minutes to cut the strips.  Eighteen minutes netted me 24 strips per sheet, so 48 in one cutting.  It takes two strips to make a coil about 7/8 of an inch wide.  I also cut half inch strips of magazine pages and folded them as well.  The flimsy magazine paper coiled much easier than the card stock, but you had to pay more attention to the fold because the paper tended to slide.

I folded each strip of card stock in half then rolled each strip into a spiral. Again, I did not ask myself how long was this going to take.  I never have measured how long it takes to coil an individual spiral.  What I can tell you that five sheets worth of 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) strips took about six hours.  I started making the coils when my husband and I watched television in the evening.  Once the spiral is started, you can basically make the spiral by feel.

Then I started gluing the spirals together.  Just so you know, you have to keep an eye on the spirals to make sure that they are not stealthily spinning outward into a cone on the other side while you are rolling them at this point.   I would spread glue on about a four inch section of the  folded card stock, roll that into a spiral, then add a few more inches of glue and roll some more.  I found that if I did more than a few inches at a time of the glue that I was covered in it when the paper whipped around.  Once I had the card stock glued down, I added  a strip of the magazine paper, then another strip of card stock.  It was slow going at first, but I picked up speed as I went along.  Speed is a relative term however.  Now that I have my method down, I can create spirals at the blazing rate of six per hour.  You read that correctly, at the rate of one every ten minutes.  The photo shows some rows of coiled spirals.  That is another six hours worth of work, on top of the six hours that it took me to coil the spirals in the first place.

The base of the bowl is a slightly different story.  I started making the base from 2 inch (50.8 mm) magazine strips.  Rather than folding them in half as I did the card stock, I folded them in half, opened out to the full width, then folded each end into the center.  Opened out the paper, smeared the strip glue, and refolded the paper.  That way, both the top and bottom had smooth edges.  The card stock, only folded in half, has one side that has smooth edges, and one side that shows the raw edge of the paper.  I coiled the paper around and around gluing each piece to the next until I reached about the size of the base that I wanted for my bowl.  Then I started working with the spirals to see how many I would need to go once around the base.  I wanted stripes of color to spiral around the base.  Turns out that my base was already to large, so I decided that rather than make the stripes wider, I would use one color twice.  After I had the base the right size, I gave the whole thing a couple of coats of Modge Podge to completely seal it.  One thing I did find is that the colors of the magazines get a little muddy when the glue soaks in.  The spiral of colors looks nice, but it might have been more colorful if I had used card stock instead.

Once my base was complete, I started to hot glue the spirals around the base.  This is the first set of 12x 12 sheets made into spirals and glued onto the base.  It only took about twenty minutes to glue them on.  The bowl is nowhere near finished.  At this point, I am at least thirteen hours in on this project.  I have cut and made the initial coil on  a second set of card stock papers.   Of course, this project is being done in my "spare time."  Eventually, the bowl will becomes a vase.  Each layer is going to be set slightly inward so that it will not be as wide as the base.  So, it may take three or four more sets of coils to get it looking like I want it.  I want it to be tall enough that you will be able to really notice the spiral of colorful stripes going around it.  This project is going to take a while. 

If I had taken the time to estimate how long it was going to take to make a coil, and how many coils I expected it to take to complete the project, I would have understood just how long the project was going to take.  I did not, because I thought it was going to be a very simple project.  Now I know better.  This project is so simple that it would be something you could do with a child, but I think a child would know better.  She (or he) would get bored with it and walk away.