Saturday 29 September 2012

Handmade paper

I have been trying my hand at making paper. I can say I have learned a lot during the process and have decided to research and new projects I try before going ahead and doing them, instead of trying to remember how I did it in school when I was 10.

Anyway here is what I did and my recommendations for you to not make the same mistakes I made lol

You will need 
Frames, paper, water, Material, sponge, staples, bowl, blender (optional), cornflour/ cornstarch

First of all you need some frames, I got my hubby to make me some 
You then need some fabric to spread over them, I used an old pair of tights, but I would recommend something more stable like cheese cloth or muslin.
Staple it into place
You should end up with something like this 
OK next you need to take some old paper, this can be junk mail, or old bank letters etc, in fact this is a great way to use up all those documents you have shredded up.
 You then need to soak it in water
 At this point you can either blend it using 1 cup water to small handful of wet paper. If you are blending then I would recommend making sure the bottom of the bowl is fully secure (oops I didn't and made a right mess)
 Or you can do it by hand, This is great but time consuming, but if you are getting children to help then they will have much merriment doing it this way.
You want something that looks like this, from here on called pulp.
Add 2 inches of water in your bowl per handful of pulp and add in a few tablespoons of cornflour to your water too.
 dip your frame in, material side up 
carefully run a finger around the wooden edges, to remove the excess 
 place another frame material side down over the top
 press and squeeze as much water out as you can, use a sponge to really soak up as much as possible
 or use a towel but it will get very wet very quickly so have plenty to hand if using them. A sponge you can just squeeze as often as you need.
 Remove the top frame, and turn out the paper onto some where flat
 layer up as many as you want if you only have a small drying space and place something heavy on top to both keep it flat and squeeze it thinner 
Leave to dry overnight, best to be somewhere warm

then you can write away.

After I had done all this i found loads of instructional videos on YouTube where they made it look sooo much easier than I did it lol
Anyway off to learn a new craft.

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