I snatched up a really nice
shredder for an absolute steal at a garage sale. I really needed a
shredder before I could get serious about making paper, because ripping
up dozens of sheets by hand is a lot more exhausting than you might
think. For this first batch of paper, I used exclusively junk mail with
nothing else mixed in, so I shredded a bunch of it and stored it in a
big bag.
I took about half of the bag and let it soak in warm water. I scrunched
all of the paper into a glass bowl with just enough water to cover it,
then kept adding more paper until it was as full as possible. I added
just a little bit more water and left it overnight. There isn't any big
change in appearance between the dry and wet paper, except for the fact
that the water becomes dark gray as the ink seeps out of the paper.
The next step the following morning was to blend the scraps into pulp.
It's very easy, and I just used the regular blender from our kitchen.
Just pulse it a little bit at a time and stir every once in a while, and
add water if it's too thick or the blender is having a hard time mixing
it. Once you have all the pulp you pour it into a big vat of water and
stir everything around with your hand so that all of the pulp floats to
the surface.
This probably isn't a very good picture, but this was the vat of water
with all of the gray pulp floating on top. I threw in some dried flower
petals that came with my mould and deckle (the frame you use to scoop
out sheets of paper) when I bought it, but I didn't really like using
them, so I doubt I'll make paper with them again. If I had nice white
cotton pulp I would probably like the floral additions, but with crappy
paper like this they just looked ugly and unnecessary.
You need a mould and deckle to pull sheets of paper. You can make your
own, but I just ended up buying one. A mould and deckle is basically
like a screen with a wooden frame on top of it. You dip it into the pulp
mixture, and when you pull it out, all the water drips out while the
paper pulp stays on top of the screen in the shape of a sheet. Then, you
take off the frame so you can flip the sheet upside down onto a felt and
let it dry.
At first, I was drying on felts like you're supposed to, and everything
was going pretty well.
However, my piece of felt is pretty small, so I only got a few sheets on
there before I ran out of room.
After I ran out of room, I grabbed a big laminated board I had in the
garage and used that as a base instead. The paper that dried on the
board was really weird, and had lots of air pockets in it for some
reason. The side that laid against the board itself dried completely
smooth, while the air-dried side still had a little bit of texture to
it.
I ended up getting about 25 sheets of paper out of my first batch. There
were a lot of different textures because of the air bubbles and other
factors. Some sheets I dried with no intervention, and other ones I
pressed between books. Like I said before, I didn't like how the flower
petals looked in the final product. Because I only used junk mail to
begin with, the final result was very flimsy, but I didn't mind too much
because this was more about the process rather than the final product.
I used one of the sheets for a little letterpress/doodle.
I'll figure out something to do with the other sheets soon, hopefully,
and I plan on making more soon!
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