Create Your Own set of Napkin Rings! Free Pattern!

What do you do when your Mom is 80+, a member of the local Hobby Club and needs transportation to events for "Members Only"? Unless you want to sit outside waiting in car, you join the Hobby Club, that's what you do!

Mom is talented in crochet, needlepoint, crafts and plastic canvas projects. As long as I can remember, she entered her delicate dollies, exquisite edge laces, colorful afghans and crocheted household items in competitions. Grace Callanan has won numerous ribbons from Fairs and Exhibits spanning 60 years. Her gorgous, colorful products have an aire of originality and practicality. Her talents were inherited by my older sister. Patti-Ann Stanley paints, sews, restores and renovates dolls of all kinds and is a Cloth Doll artist. In the summer of 2000, one of her original dolls was selected in the Hoffman Challenge to travel in exhibition for a year.

One would think all this talent would naturally fall on my shoulders, too, but I tend to be all thumbs when it comes to crochet. And, I have been told that I do not have an eye for colors and not to try to make a living with my sketches. Rather than art, I excell in science and math. I did attend the University of Michigan and University of Hawaii, was graduated with degrees in Engineering and spent my last 16 pre-retirement years in the aerospace industry. So, as a new Hobby Club member, I needed to find a project, especially one I could sell at the semi-annual bazaars.

I began thinking of what materials I had around the house that could be recycled. When my frequent flyer miles came due a few months earlier, I was offered a subscription to a daily financial paper. It was a case of what one calls "use it or lose it". All summer I received daily copies printed on salmon colored paper. They were so unusal, I saved a large stack for later reading and recycling. Looking at that stack, the idea of newspaper craft came alive. Strips of this salmon newsprint and a flour/water paste can be used in an old fashioned method for creating thickness and body. The idea of making napkin rings was born!

My first thoughts were to cut strips of newspaper parallel to the printing and wrap them around a ring shape. A person could then read the daily news while dining! I tried making a few rings using that method, but the result was not as pleasing as I had envisioned. For the outer layer, I began using brightly colored strips cut from the advertising boxes of the newspaper. After shellacing the rings, they shine and sparkle like enamel. I sell the rings for $10 per set of four at our Hobby Club Bazaar!

Get your quick instruction set for making these napkin ring-shaped holders, free of charge.

This newspaper craft can also be applied to a second group of recycle items; used medicine bottles. Today there is an abundance of old pill bottles available, especially in my area of the country. I have found that one can coat the amber colored plastic bottles with strips of newspaper and flour/water paste to build a base for attaching other materials. Enamel will not adhere to the plastic surface or has very poor durability. When the lay-up dries, it tightens around the bottle and one can build from that point. The question is, though, "What shall I build?" Let me know if you have an inspiration!

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