I tried acrylic paint, but it prevents me from making adjustments afterward by gluing more stuff on. Maybe I’ll try watercolor or felt

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In general, I would glue 5 pieces of cardboard using paper to make the underside of the box. Then I’d put the items in and glue on more layers to fill in the leftover space. After finishing the top layer, I’d leave the items inside the box for a few days to dry and shrink

After that, you can add more paper to make the surface harder, or glue on anything you want.

It’s made from cardboard and a bit of egg carton paper

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My items does look much better when I use the brown paper from cardboard than when I use discarded white paper

There are basically 3 ingredients: cardboard, paper, and glue.

First I would make glue by mixing flour with water 1:10 and microwave it until boiling. I’d stir and scrape the bottom every 30 seconds for the first few minutes to avoid burning

The cardboard needs to be kept dry (unless you want to separate the layers). It can be cut pretty easily with a serrated knife. For the first few layers of this box, I cut the cardboard to match the shape of the items. For the final layers, I just took the leftover pieces and glue them on. It doesn’t have to be perfect since you can add more paper later. However, cardboard - cardboard bonds seems to be pretty weak, and you can’t put too much glue on it, or it will get wet and separate. So I use paper to bind them together.

To get the paper, I spray water down the wavy side of the cardboard (a strong hose seem to work better than a trickle). After that the layers should separate easily. Getting the paper wet and tearing it by hand will give it better edges than cutting with scissors. I would use big pieces of paper on flat surfaces and straight angles, then thin strips for corners and curvy surfaces.

If you need to cut out something from the piece, you can wait for it to dry and cut with the serrated knife. The first version of the box actually doesn’t have the hole for the funnel, I actually cut it out with the serrated knife. Then I covered the knife marks with paper

Edit: you can use any cardboard without the glossy surface. The glossy surface doesn’t stick to the glue.

Yeah, sometimes I just let it sit there to cook. The insulation would retain the temperature for a while

I cut them with a serrated knife or scissors, then glue the pieces together

I did think of insulating my big pot too, but I don’t use it very much. One time I made a big pot of spaghetti sauce for freezing and now I still haven’t finished eating it.

The inner container doesn’t com into contact with the food. They are sealed in their own bags

Sous vide bags containing the food I want to cook

Yes, it’s to prevent heat loss and water loss. I just feel that an insulated container would lose a lot of heat over the hours of cooking.

Yeah, I put the brush handle along with other stuff but I want to keep the brush head separated and clean.

I just mixed it with glue to make a grainy paste. Then I used it to fill around the the razor and brush. Finally I covered it with paper and dry for a week. Occasionally I would leave the razor and brush inside to prevent it from shrinking

That’s a good idea, but I’ll wait for a few months of use to see if I want to modify it before painting.

You can gets started with this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45JhacvmXV8. I don’t reccomend waterproofing your stuff though, as it prevents you from modifying them later.

For moulding, coffee ground and glue is simpler, but will take a week to completely dry. It also shrinks, so you have to leave your items inside for the first days of drying. Corrugated cardboard layers will dry faster and keep their outer shape, but is more tedious to make. Maybe you can try cardboard inside and coffee ground outside

In any case, cover the surface with paper and the corners with thin strips of paper. I’d recommend drying it quickly (using a heat gun, or the sun) to prevent fungal growth inside the thick parts.

I don’t have it with me right now, but basically I just wrapped many layers of paper around the inner part until it tightly fits the cover

Yeah that table took weeks to build

Haha I’m pretty proud of my paint idea

I made the glue from 1 part corn starch and 10 part water by weight, microwaved until boiling.

I found that serrated knives cut cardboard best, but they need to be re-sharpened often. The cardboard absorbs a lot of glue so it need to be applied multiple times before sticking together.

I used paper to secure the joints between the cardboard pieces and to wrap the outside before painting. The glue doesn’t really stick to acrylic paint, so it should be the final part, and you can’t add anything else afterward. If I do it again I would leave to table bare, or maybe use watercolor