Paper Mache Beehive

I found a beehive cake pan at the thrift store and knew I wanted to use it to construct a paper mache hive, read on to see how:

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Here is the pan that I found for $5, I knew right away that I wanted it for a decor piece! I've done a lot of cake pan makeovers using paint, but because half of this cake pan is always upside down that wasn't going to work. I decided to pull out my elementary school memories of paper mache and see what I could manage...

I did this exactly as I recalled from grade school; cut strips of paper dipped in a sticky mixture of flour and water. I hear that some people use glue instead of the flour/ water mixture, but this ended up working out ok.

Strip by strip I layered on top of the cake pan, making sure to capture as much detail as possible by pressing the strips as closely to the various shapes as possible. I didn't worry too much about it because I knew I could fix up any blemishes with paint later. I also left a bit of overlap around the edges, I figured it would be easier to pull the dried paper mache off if it had more of and edge.

Here is how the hive looked when dried as I pulled it off. I used scissors to trim the edges.

I wanted my beehive to sit on a shelf in my garden shed and not be too big, so I only made the front half of the hive. This meant that there was no back to the hive, but I fixed that by tracing and cutting out some foam board.

To give the hollow hive more strength, I stuffed it with plastic bags before attaching the foam backing with glue.

I painted the entire hive first in Apple Barrel Khakki.

Then used Golden Sunset to add dimension and Milk Chocolate to highlight the details (both also Apple Barrel brand).

The bees were a bit messy through the paper strips, but I was able to better define them using puffy paint.

And that's how I made my paper mache beehive, it now happily lives outside in my garden shed.

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

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