Increasingly recently, liquid wallpapers have been used to decorate walls, which are applied using various tools, such as rollers, brushes and spatulas. It is possible to use other painting and plastering devices in the process.
Ready mixes are sold in stores, but many home craftsmen prepare this coating themselves. If you also wondered how to make liquid wallpaper, you should know that they can be based on a variety of materials that have no value. This feature can be considered a positive quality, because you will not have to spend money on expensive components. Another plus is the ability to address the issue of waste management.
What are liquid wallpapers?
Before deciding how to make liquid wallpaper yourself at home, you should familiarize yourself with the basic properties of this material and understand what it is. These are breathable mixtures based on fibers:
Among the ingredients is a bonding agent, it can be glue, which when mixed creates a mass suitable for application to vertical walls. In the end, you should get something like plaster.
Ready mixes are sold in sealed plastic bags. On the packages there is an instruction. The bags contain a dry composition of fibers, plasticizing and modifying additives, as well as glue. Liquid wallpaper of this type can be painted in a certain shade or have a neutral color.
If you want to apply the mixture with a specific tint, you should purchase a white composition, and then give it the desired shade with the help of coloring additives. If you are solving the problem of how to make liquid wallpaper, you should know that mixtures of this type have certain advantages, namely:
- porosity of the structure;
- ability to pass steam;
- lack of smells;
- antistatic qualities;
- fire safety;
- lack of ability to absorb odors;
- lack of seams;
- ability to mask wall defects;
- lack of need to carefully prepare the surface;
- the ability to repair certain areas in case of damage;
- the ability to apply a new layer of wallpaper to the old with a different color;
- ease of dismantling;
- the possibility of coloring in different colors;
Self-made wallpaper from paper waste
Before you make liquid wallpaper, you should familiarize yourself with several recipes. Some of them include the addition of decorative ingredients, which allows to achieve the desired effect. Some components are subject to change.
If the basis will be paper waste, then for the work should be prepared:
- any paper;
- dye;
- gypsum;
- PVA glue;
- acrylic plaster;
- water
- additives.
As for paper, it can be:
- sheets with text;
- books
- old newspapers;
- packaging wrappers;
- scraps unnecessary on the farm.
When preparing dyes, you may prefer several colors at once. Acrylic plaster can be replaced with Bustilat glue. Quite often, when thinking about how to make liquid wallpapers, home craftsmen do not know what to use as additives. It can be:
- dried seaweed;
- chopped tree bark;
- mica powder;
- yarn;
- sparkles;
- crumbs of quartz and granite.
You can use another thing - fine stones. The manufacturing process of the framework involves the observance of several stages. Dye is added to the finished mixture. After standing, the selected additives are poured. You have to chop paper. The smaller the pieces, the faster the process will go.
The methodology of the work
The crushed paper must be placed in a container and filled with water, leaving for 4 hours to soften the material. 5 kg of water will be required per kilogram of raw materials. After the mentioned time, the paper with water is stirred using an electric drill with a nozzle in the form of a mixer. As a result, you should get a homogeneous mass.
If you are studying the question of how to make liquid wallpaper, you should know that at the next stage it is necessary to add glue and dye to the resulting mixture, and then continue mixing. The composition is laid out in a plastic bag or wrapped in a film. In this state, the wallpaper is left for 12 hours to mature.
After the mass unfold and knead manually. If you want to use glitter, you will need to combine them with the rest of the ingredients after ripening. Before applying to the surface, the mass is pre-combined with gypsum and mixed again until smooth. The more gypsum, the faster the mixture will set and harden. This indicates that adding the mentioned component immediately to the whole prepared mass is not worth it.
Making wallpaper from other fibrous materials
If you, too, are among those who are thinking about how to make liquid wallpapers, then you can use the recipe for the use of fibrous materials. To do this, prepare cellulose or cotton fiber. It can be ordinary cotton wool or "Ecowool" thermal insulation, which consists of wood pulp. There should be a lot of material if the decoration is carried out on large areas. This question needs to be thought out in advance.
When using ordinary wool, it is crushed. The procedure is carried out manually, household scissors can be used. Some craftsmen are building something like a mixer, which involves the use of an electric drill with a nozzle. A bowl for this can serve as a bucket where the material is laid. The container is well closed by a lid with a hole for the mixer shaft. Otherwise, its elements will fly apart. The cover can be made of thick cardboard.
Alternatives
How to make liquid wallpaper at home? This question is being asked today by those who begin repair. If you also thought about this, then instead of cotton wool, you can use cellulose, which will become the main material. It can be linen fibers, wool, polyester or synthetic winterizer. The material is well crushed. The smaller the particles, the easier it will be to mix them. The mass will be more uniform.
You can also use threads from cotton, wool, a mixture of several components or synthetics. Often needlewomen have a lot of leftover yarn. You can dissolve old sweaters and sweaters that are no longer in use.
Threads are crushed. This can be done with scissors or a sharp ax-chopper for cabbage, but for this you need a wooden base. If, when deciding on how to make liquid wallpaper at home, you want to use this method, you should know that the grinding work is quite tedious, but the result will exceed all expectations. Colored threads can be used as a base or additive to the mass of paper and fibers.
Binder
Before you make a liquid wallpaper with your own hands out of paper, you should think about which component will act as a binder. It will hold the fibrous structure together. Bustilate, PVA glue or wallpaper casein glue can be used for this purpose.
You can apply acrylic based putty. The latter has a specific smell, and also requires dilution with water. The most resistant to deformation and abrasion are wallpaper on an acrylic putty.
Decorative additives
Now you know how to make liquid wallpaper from paper, but you should also think about what decorative additives to use. It can be a crumb of minerals, mica or spangles. Their application depends on what effect you want to get. It is important to observe moderation, you should not use several additives, as this can ruin everything.
Sometimes ingredients are added to the liquid wallpaper that prevent the appearance of fungal formations on the walls. You can find such components in construction stores, they have an affordable cost.
What dyes to use
Before you make liquid wallpaper yourself, you should think about what dyes you plan to apply. The pigment is added to the wet mixture while stirring, this will achieve the desired shade and uniformity. If you want to give the surface a rainbow color heterogeneity, as well as blotches and color swings, you should do the following: first, the color is added and mixed with the mass until the color is uniform. The second portion is added before applying the composition to the walls, but this time it is not necessary to knead the wallpaper thoroughly. Some areas should remain unmixed.
Finally
If you want to make a room upgrade and are thinking about how to make liquid wallpaper yourself, you must first deal with the raw materials. It can be cardboard, paper, fiberboard and even a laminate. The material is cut, and the original composition remains almost unchanged. This allows you to repeatedly process the mass.
It is important to correctly determine the proportions of paper and water for soaking. When you think about how to make liquid wallpaper at home, you should add 1.25 liters of water to 40 sheets of A4 format. One sheet will have 30 ml of liquid.