TP Roll Wall Art

As promised, I'm here to show you a project I recently completed using only empty toilet paper rolls, hot glue, and purple spray paint. Because I technically owned all of these things, it was free!

I was inspired to try it based on this picture from pinterest:
To start, I collected about 20 rolls (& a paper towel one for good measure):
Because tp rolls are approximately 4 inches long, I measured each one and drew a tick mark at the 1 inch mark, 2 inch mark, and 3 inch mark to signify where to cut them down:

Using regular scissors, I did just that, right at the marks:
At this point, your roll will bend, and that's okay. In fact, the next step is to go ahead and fold each strip in half, so that when you let go of it, it'll automatically bounce into the teardropish shape.

Once you've done about, oh 80 strips or so, you can play around with how you want it to look once glued together:

Gahhh, they just make the coolest shapes!

For me the hardest part was starting out the center 5:

I fired up my glue gun and, as quickly as possible, hit the sides nearer to one end for all five pieces:
Then held them together with my left hand:
Be careful doing this, because the glue is hot even through one layer of the roll. From here, I just started sticking them in, trying to keep the same pattern all around, until I used up all my strips and had one giant lovely piece.

Once your glue has dried, get rid of all those annoying little strings because when you go to paint it, they'll pick up the spray:
I took my creation downstairs and hit all the angles with purple paint. This is important because it's tricky to get inside each roll and in between them, so you might have to do this in a couple of sessions, letting it dry in between. I had to spray it from a side angle, then head-on to get in between things.

You can see here that I didn't get inside every single roll perfectly, but that's okay, because it still looks AWESOME:

And here is the view from head-on if it's hanging on a wall.

I'm gonna be honest, I tried to keep my design 100% symmetrical, but once I got to a certain point, it was very hard to tell where I needed to glue my next piece, so I started just sticking them in where it looked like they belong. It's not totally symmetrical, but I still like it!


And so you can get a better idea of how this looks in proportion to my dining room hutch:

So there you have it! Totally free, fun, and FABULOUS:

I haven't linked up to a party in a looong time, so I'm jumping in here!!