Soya milk cartons | Natural dyes | Reused webbing

This project allowed me to explore a few different ideas. It’s another exploration into ‘stripping’ TetraPak cartons, it uses natural dyes to colour the cartons and its made with a new technique for creating the loops without the use of a guillotine.

I’ve had a large guillotine for a long time and it’s great because it allows me to cut a lot of loops fast and (fairly) accurately, but the main reason why this isn’t the best method is because it leaves exposed edges that can be affected by damp.

In this laundry basket design I creased and folded the edges over but it was time consuming, but given that today that basket is still in almost daily use, it was time well spent.

Since then I’ve wondered how to speed up the process as well as how to make loops without a guillotine because this would allow for instructions to reach a wider group of people.

So here is my first attempt at making loops with just a block of wood and a pair of scissors. There was minimal measuring needed, too, so I think this has potential to have appeal to a wide range of people.

As for the stripped cartons – they give a faux suede effect that I really like. I dug out some old henna dye and a random packet of ‘herbal hair colour’ that I’ve never had a use for. This led me to look up dying paper with henna and I found out that it is used to protect paper. See more here. The print side that I tore off went to make this heart basket.

The design of this bag is probably the strongest I could make it. The base and rim are in aluminium as this gives protection and is long lasting.