I recently found out that you can make boxes from dried citrus rind. This is a traditional Italian craft originally used to make snuff / tobacco boxes out of bergamot orange skin (the outside goes on the inside, and the contents pick up the scent of the oils). You can use any citrus fruit with a smooth rind (I mean, in principle you could use something wrinkly, but it might be harder to work with). I made these out of ruby grapefruit. The procedure (aggregated from multiple online sources): 1. Halve the fruit (from pole to pole, not across the equator, so that you don't end up with a flaw right in the middle of each half) . 2. Eat the contents with a spoon. 3. Remove the membranes and carefully pick off most of the pith. 4. Soak the empty skins in hot water with a little baking soda for about half an hour. 5. Invert and stretch each half carefully over the base of an appropriately-sized jar, and use some rubber bands to hold the edge in place. 6. Wait until dry. 7. Apply a few layers of paper mache to the outside of each half to strengthen the box and reinforce any cracks, and wait until that dries. 8. Trim the edges to make them even. 9. Optionally sand the edge and outside lightly, and paint / further decorate the outside. More details based on my experiences so far: * If you don't have two jars that are conveniently sized to give you a base and lid that fit together, you can wrap a taped loop of cardboard around one of two identical jars, to provide extra space around the rim of the lid. You could also do this only when adding the paper. I don't recommend trying to reshape one half while it's half-dry; that's a great way to tear it. * Make sure you put the halves back on their moulds to dry, or they will warp. * You can use a warm iron to smooth out wrinkles in the paper mache. * I used tissue paper (split into layers) and a blend of wallpaper paste and white wood glue for the paper mache. The glue doubles as a finish. More info in descriptions. #crafts
Update: I got some big marsh grapefruit (absolute units) and I've started my next box. I forgot to photograph the start of the process, but you know what a grapefruit looks like. This time it actually was easier to scrape off the pith after soaking (I cleaned up some remaining scraggly bits with a spoon before inverting). I forgot to mention that you should use a tea towel to blot most of the moisture out at the end. My little jars were dwarfed by these skins, so I had to use bigger ones -- I found two with no concave curves at the bottom that were very slightly different sizes; I'll see how the halves fit together.
confluency
Further update: the next citrus box is probably almost done. This time the skins themselves fit together, with a slight overhang of the lid. I was too impatient when removing the skins from the jars after the initial drying, and ended up with cracks (the same thing happened with the upcoming set). I patched the cracks with strips of normal-weight paper and undiluted white glue, and also ended up applying a whole layer of the thicker paper, for stability. I reshaped the lid to be more evenly domed while it was temporarily softened from the moisture from the paper mache application. I put some folded tissue between skin and jar whenever I put the halves back on the jar moulds to dry in between layers, to prevent moisture from collecting. I decorated this box with water-based craft paint and two coats of diluted white glue with a little silver paint mixed in (I don't love the effect -- unfortunately I have loads of fabric paint, but a limited palette of craft paint). I smoothed out most of the surface wrinkles with a warm iron at various stages (using either the jar or my fingers as the ironing surface -- if the iron is hot enough to burn you through the box as you press on it from the inside, it's too hot!). It's not perfect, but it's not bad. I should try sanding as an alternative approach. I may try to use *only* thicker paper for the next box: it's less stretchy when wet, which is good because it's less likely to form pockets, but bad because it's harder to shape larger pieces over curves. Unfortunately while I have duplicates of the base jar, I only have one of the lid jars (I have a lot of jars! I checked all of them!), so I can only have one lid drying on a jar at a time. I may start on the last grapefruit first and leave the second set of skins (already dry) for last, so that I can eat the grapefruit! #crafts
