{"id":7220,"date":"2025-04-03T17:15:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T17:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/?p=7220"},"modified":"2025-04-04T17:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T17:41:20","slug":"the-best-and-easiest-paper-mach-formula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/the-best-and-easiest-paper-mach-formula\/","title":{"rendered":"The best and easiest paper mach&eacute; formula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been using <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4i28Hou\" target=\"_blank\">Roman Pro-543 Universal wallpaper adhesive<\/a> (paid link*) for my paper mach&eacute; projects for so many years, I decided to write a quick article about this product specifically, and why I love working with it! <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/roman.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/roman.jpg\" alt=\"A bottle of Roman Pro-543 Universal wallpaper adhesive sitting in front of my paper mache Jabberwocky sculpture\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Roman Pro-543 Universal wallpaper adhesive has been my go-to paste for all of my paper mach&eacute; projects for close to a decade. In my early days of experimenting with paper mach&eacute;, I tried a lot of other types of adhesive &mdash; flour and water, Elmer&#8217;s Glue, Elmer&#8217;s Art Paste, other commercial wallpaper adhesive brands &mdash; but I landed on Roman Pro-543 pretty early and have stuck with it for 100% of my paper mach&eacute; projects ever since. <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/paper-mache-gallery\/\">Every project you see on this site<\/a> that&#8217;s from the last ten years or so was made by me with Roman Pro-543 adhesive.<\/p>\n <div class=\"ad-300x250 ad-float-right\">\r\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- MMS 300x250 -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5009313124668288\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3616150394\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<\/div>\n<p>I order <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4i28Hou\" target=\"_blank\">Roman adhesive by the gallon on Amazon<\/a> (paid link). My wife and I go through at least one gallon every Halloween season and another gallon every Mardi Gras season. <\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the reasons why I like Roman Pro-543:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No mixing. This stuff is ready to go. I just pour some into a small bucket and I can immediately begin working with it. This adhesive looks and smells a lot like Elmer&#8217;s Glue, but it&#8217;s a bit thicker. <\/li>\n<li>No hassle. I don&#8217;t want to worry about mixing anything &mdash; measuring out quantities, taking the time to mix everything thoroughly, etc. I don&#8217;t want to worry about how to store mixed paste, or how long it&#8217;s going to last when it&#8217;s stored in a container. (I&#8217;ve had a couple types of paste go bad a few weeks after storing.) I just want a product that&#8217;s ready to go.<\/li>\n<li>Dries fast. Because it&#8217;s less of a liquid and more of a viscous goop, this stuff tends to dry very fast; much faster than other paper mach&eacute; formulas where you&#8217;re dipping strips of paper into a liquid-y paste. I also use a fan to speed up drying, which really helps! For most of my paper mach&eacute; projects, I can do four layers of paper in one go, then point a fan at the project and reposition it every hour or so, and the project is totally dry by the next day.<\/li>\n<li>Smooth texture. I find that Roman Pro 543 adhesive gives me a smoother texture than I&#8217;ve had when working with other recipes\/brands, and I believe this is due to a few things; these are just my guesses! 1. Less liquid-y adhesive generally means fewer wrinkles since the paper doesn&#8217;t get completely soaked. 2. Some types of powdered adhesive I&#8217;ve used end up with a grainy texture; that&#8217;s not the case with the Roman adhesive.<\/li>\n<li>Less mess, easy cleanup. Because the Roman adhesive is very thick, it doesn&#8217;t drip very much when you work with it, and if it does drip, the drops are viscous blobs that can be wiped up easily with a paper towel or sponge. And if it drips and has time to dry, you can easily clean it up with just water. <\/li>\n<li>No critters. Unlike flour and water and some other types of organic-based art paste, bugs and mice will not eat your paper mach&eacute; projects that are made with Roman adhesive. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>How much Roman adhesive do I need?<\/h2>\n<p>A lot of people come to my blog looking for info about making large paper mach&eacute; masks, and a question I get sometimes is: how much Roman adhesive do I need? Of course the answer is going to be different for every project, but I can tell you that for any one large mask project I&#8217;ve never used a full gallon &mdash; so one gallon will definitely be enough for you if you&#8217;re making a mask. My masks might take anywhere from one quarter to three quarters of a gallon of adhesive, depending on how large and complicated they are. <\/p>\n<h2>More info<\/h2>\n<p>Of course, don&#8217;t miss <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/my-paper-mache-method\/\">my article about my paper mach&eacute; process<\/a>! I talk about working with the Roman adhesive in this article too. <\/p>\n<h2>A quote<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;Manning preaches the gospel of Romans 5:43.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ha! This is something a friend of mine has told me he actually says about me when he&#8217;s telling people about me and my paper mach&eacute; techniques, etc. Hilarious. I really do bring up Roman adhesive in every conversation about this stuff. <\/p>\n<p>Happy paper-mache-ing!<\/p>\n<p>*Full disclosure, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases; I link to the specific products I use for my projects so that I can share this info with people! I earn a little bit of money through my Amazon links, but I honestly don&#8217;t care <em>where<\/em> you get this stuff! I just want to share my materials and techniques with people who are interested in doing paper mach&eacute;. I never link to products that I don&#8217;t actually use and enjoy. If it&#8217;s linked on this site, I use it and it&#8217;s great. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been using Roman Pro-543 Universal wallpaper adhesive (paid link*) for my paper mach&eacute; projects for so many years, I decided to write a quick article about this product specifically, and why I love working with it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7220"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7225,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7220\/revisions\/7225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}