Making Paper

Hi everyone, this post is about making paper......from paper!

It is a great way of using old scrap pieces of paper and envelopes, this post covers the basic preparation.

You will need.

Old towels
Newspapers
J cloths
Large container for water and pulp
Old hand blender
Jug
Access to water and sink
And of course your torn paper


First of all you need to tear into very small pieces  your paper, I have included some brown paper to create a nice creamy beige colour.

You will need to pour some hot water onto the paper and leave for around 30 minuets to soak.

Once soaked take a small amount of the paper and place into a plastic jug.

Add some extra liquid to cover your paper.

Using an old hand blender pulp the paper pieces.

Add the pulp to a container with warm water in....see photo above.

Swoosh around with your hand, repeat this process until you have a good amount of paper pulp in your container, the more pulp the thicker your paper.

Using a Deckle ( you can make this using an old picture frame and some net stretched across and stapled to the back) Slide under your pulp.

Then lift slowly letting the excess water run off, be careful not to tip your Deckle at too sharp an angle! you do not want your pulp sliding off.

Lift out slowly and turn out onto J cloth.

Dab the back of the Deckle to remove excess water

Then lift frame slowly releasing your sheet of paper. Put all your sheets of paper to dry, if you are going to emboss your paper needs to be slightly damp.

Once my sheets were ready .....using a small table top printer (borrowed from my friend) I layered up the paper with lace and crochet.

These are a couple of embossed dry pieces, they can be torn up and used to create pages for artist books. If you are careful depending on thickness of paper you can also stitch into them.

This little book has added fabric to compliment the pages of embossed paper.

Here you can see the embossed piece, I have given it the lightest of touch with a white oil pastel.

A big thank you to my lovely friend Coral Spencer for demonstrating while I took the photos and the use of her printer to emboss.

Have fun.

Marilyn xx