The art of paper tubes
Different stages of woman and below another creation
A 5’1” tall Eiffel Tower made with recycled Sunday Times newspapers stands proudly in Rekha Thayapararajah’s living room. The finely detailed work took her 17 days to create.
Creator of the Eiffel Tower and other extremely interesting pieces, Rekha has an IT degree and worked as a teacher but her true passion lies in creating figures using paper tubes as well as other creative endeavours such as gift wrapping, painting, and other craft activities. She dabbled in pottery, origami, and quilling when she was younger. After creating her pieces, she uploads pictures of them to Facebook as well as generously gifts them to her friends.
Rekha Thayapararajah
Her Eiffel Tower can be broken down into three separate pieces. She used toothpicks to mould the smaller ends of the tower as well as a glue gun to fit all of the paper tubes together. The replica stands tall. Two other notable pieces are the ‘Journey of a woman’s life’ and ‘Self-made women’. The ‘Self-made woman’ was one of her most interesting pieces she feels. Rekha described it as,“when you gothrough difficult situations you adapt and become the person that you want to be.” ‘Journey of a woman’s life’ takes us through the stages of life: infancy, childhood, adolescence, falling in love, having children and finally old age.
Talking about her hobby she says, “It is a good time pass and I really enjoy it.” Her smaller pieces usually take two days to create.
After the garbage crisis of last year, Rekha was inspired to use recycled material for her art projects, mainly recycled newspapers. Her inspiration also stems from her childhood memories, her own life experiences and what she sees around her as well as on the Internet. In fact her first ever piece using paper tubes – a Spiderman model for her nephew she learnt how to make watching YouTube tutorials as well as by looking at Pinterest.
Her process starts with rolling paper tubes with the help of pens, toothpicks and other similar devices and gluing them together. She also wires when necessary to create moulds and finally paints them with metallic colours for a metallic effect. Looking at them one would assume that they are heavy and made of metal but once you pick one up you realize how light it actually is.
Also innovative is how she has fused African styled dolls with Indian fashion.
Rekha’s creations are very cost effective as she primarily uses recycled material. Her next project will be the Leaning Tower of Pisa with which she hopes to break the world record for the tallest model made with paper tubes.
Eiffel Tower stands tall and light