Muffins! It’s day 7 of the IGGPPCamp Challenges, my lovely Iggles! I’m so excited!

PaperWands

Today, we’re doing wands again. But this time, we’re making them out of paper. Should be fun!

What you’ll need:
Supplies
1.) Paper
2.) Double sided tape
3.) Craft glue (Elmer’s will work too)
4.) Hot glue gun/glue sticks
5.) Scissors
6.) Paint (nail polish counts as paint…)
7.) Paintbrushes
8.) A clear varnish.  (Not pictured)
Optional
9.) Gems/Beads (Pictured not numbered)

**I mainly used this tutorial to make my own.**


First up, place your double-sided tape on a diagonal towards one side of your sheet of paper.

I know the official supply list says just “tape” – that’s my mistake, I completely forgot it was supposed to be double-sided.  Basically, you need the tape to hold your rolled up paper while you’re trying to glue the corner to secure it. You can skip the tape step, but then you’ll have to really hold your paper tightly until the glue sticks.
paperbeginning
Next, roll your paper.  Roll it unevenly, leaning more to one side. This was tricky for me, my brain was refusing to work this out. I evenly rolled four sheets of paper before I finally got it right. What you want to do is…
– Put the tape at a diagonal at the top right (as shown)
– Start rolling the paper at the bottom left, but roll diagonally, towards the right bottom corner.

I tried illustrating it in this image:
pageturn

Except you’ll want yours a bit tighter than in the illustration.

Once you’ve got the roll right, roll over the tape, then stop. Put glue on the exposed corner, spread it around with your fingers to even it out. Then continue the roll. This is supposed to make sure the roll is secure.

In the image below, you can see five rolls. The bottom four are the ones I end up using, because they’re thinner than that top roll. Next, trim the rolls down to an appropriate wand size. Trim both sides, because you don’t want your wand’s tip to be too sharp.
Rolled
To make your wand sturdier, you can make an even tighter roll of paper, and insert it in to your wand. Now get your glue gun. You’re going to want to fill in both ends of your wand. No need to fill up the wand completely… unless you want to. You’re basically just making the ends rounded. If the wider end is too wide to cover it with the glue, you can insert a bit of wadded paper in to that end – so the glue has somewhere to go.

This next part is optional. You see, now that you have your wand’s shape, there’s a seam. My fix: I coated the entire wand with hot glue little by little while using the hot, flat metal part of the gun to flatten and smooth the glue out as I went. Don’t make it completely smooth. It adds a nice wood-like texture, and hides that seam.
Gluing
Once you’ve got that covered, you can add some more glue for details and texture. These wands aren’t really designed for the heavy handled style our wooden wands were, but it’s really up to you on how to make it.

Now’s the time for your base coat. Again, I like to cover the base coat with a layer of clear matte spray before continuing. That’s optional. Then put your final paint job on. Again, mixing colors makes for unique wands.
Painting
Also, nail polish can make for some neat detailing.   (This is MEGA by I Love Nail Polish.)

Finish your wand with that clear spray finish/cover it in clear nail polish/or use some other method to protect your paint job.

And that’s it!! This go around I made four wands.
DSCF8109
The green/silver one has a gem in the end and uses Essie’s No Place Like Chrome nail polish.

For the top wand – the brown one – I used my finger to randomly rub some gold paint over it.
DSCF8105
So many different ways to make your wand!

Now, obviously, since these wands are made of paper, it’s considerably lighter, and also more fragile than the wooden ones, so should be used with more care.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s challenge and that you give it a try yourself! If you do, an achievement awaits!! Enter craftclub7 to get your Camp Challenge Paper Wand achievement, and please don’t forget to share your pics via twitter and hashtags #IGGPPCamp and #IggleCC! You can also post your pics on the forum here.