Paper Making

Weekends are great! Friday night we had a lively discussion at our book club over some great chili and berry cobbler. The book of the month; Herland. The story line follows three gentleman who discover a feminist utopia in South America. The book was written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. It's an interesting read, although nothing flashy or suspenseful. 

Today we drove out of town to "Hoarder's Joe's Keep Me Out of Jail Sale." It was an interesting collection of collections. We had fun guessing the various uses for antique "treasures." Oddly, all we bought was a new colander (in the box) because ours recently broke. Mostly, we painfully reminded ourselves that whatever we bought would have to accompany us and all of our possessions in little Tri Tran (our Subaru) the whole way across the country. To brighten  our mood we took a bike ride in the warm windy afternoon and had a picnic by the river. After we got home I decided my three year desire to learn how to make paper was going to happen...now. So, we rounded up the supplies, watched a few youtube tutorials and tried our hand at paper-making.

My dear husband is generous in his willingness to jump into projects with me (after a little convincing). I read this tutorial, and this one, and realized we didn't really have the supplies demanded by the project. I guess, usually, when making paper you use a deckle mold to press the paper pulp, but I called around town and no one had any. Dietrich's proposal: let's pop out our window screen and use a rolling pin to press the water out. So, we went for it. We bought a plastic tub to fill with pulpy water, and got home to find the tub wasn't wide enough to submerge the screen, so we persevered by pouring the pulp through the screen. Lesson of the day: the paper-making process is largely forgiving. If you want to try making paper I would recommend finding a deckle mold, but if you don't, oh well!

We used a fat quarter of old flannel, half an egg carton, half a roll of too scratchy toilet paper, and three sheets of ugly scrapbook paper. Here they are soaking in warm water.

Then we loaded them a cup at a time into the blender...

And dumped the sewage-y looking mixture in this tub.

Then I dumped some food color in to brighten things up.

Once we brought the tub outside we diluted the mixture with cold water and stirred it up.

Then we poured it through our bedroom window screen.

No photos of this step, but we put wax paper over the screen and rolling pinned the excess water out.

Then we gently urged the condensed pulp onto squares of old cloth and hung them up to dry.

Because we didn't use a deckle mold the paper is taking forever to dry, but I did iron the water out of one sheet, because I was anxious to see the end result.

Hooray! Paper!