How to Make Paper
What You Need:
Screen (see below)
Frame (see below)
Container or sink for 4″ water
Old scrap paper or plants (see below)
Blender, Food Processor, or Egg Beater (see below)
Tiny amount of cheap liquid fabric softener
Clean bleached rags (see below)
Step One: Make Your Paper Mold
The Screen: You will need a screen that is used as a part of your make paper mold. The screen part can be anything that is strong enough to load paper-pulp onto, that is leaky enough to let excess water run through.
Make paper screen ideas include: Old piece of window screen, nylon stocking, white t-shirt material, large paper coffee filter and so on. This screen needs to be 2-3 inches larger than the desired size of your finished paper.
The Screen Frame: Attach your screen material to a frame that can pull it tight like the top of a drum.
Make paper frame ideas: Tack screen to an old picture frame, use an embroidery hoop, or create a frame out of a coat hanger that you can wrap and secure your screen over. Heavy cardboard from a large box will work as a frame using staples to attach your screen, but only use this as a last resort, and only expect it to last through the making of one sheet of paper.
Step Two: Prepare Your Water
The make paper mold that you made in step-one above must be able to sit flat in about 4 inches of water. Ideas: Bucket, turkey roasting pan, dish washing plastic tub, or kitchen sink.
WARNING: If you are using your kitchen sink, you do not want the leftovers at the end of this project going down your drain without being strained first. I do use my sink, and do clean-up by bailing the leftover water/pulp mixture into a bucket, and disposing of this used water/pulp in the toilet.
Your Water: Add about 4 inches of water into your dipping container or sink. Pick out your favorite smell in cheap liquid fabric softener (it also comes in no-smell) and add a splash of cheap liquid fabric softener to your water.
Cheap liquid fabric softener is added to your water so that your ink will not bleed away from the sides of the letters that you make on your finished make paper product. The smell will stay lightly in your paper. You will have to experiment to find the best ratio of cheap liquid fabric softener for the water in your size of container.
Step Three: Decide On Pulp
Paper will take on the colorings of what you use to make it with. White paper towels, off-white outside white paper wrapping with words from a dog food bag, light tan to light gray from newspaper, interesting color speckles from magazine pages, tiny fiber swirls on light green from “solid” plants like palm or celery threads, rose color specks from wild rose petals, and so on. It is fun to experiment for new kinds of paper looks. Adding a small amount of dryer lint will add some cloth fibers to your paper.
Step Four: Prepare Pulp
Rip up your pulp choice materials (see step three) into tiny pieces and fill up your blender or food processor about half-way with this shredded paper. Add about a half-cup of water and blend. Add more pulp choices and water as needed. You are aiming for a smooth, very thick slime with tiny particle spots in it; an applesauce texture.
Blending Options: You can add food coloring to your slime pulp if you would like, the final product will be lighter than the color seen in the blender. This project can be done with an old hand-held egg beater; it just takes energy, keep mixing. Glitter can be added to your pulp slime as it is mixing for an interesting look, but it will dull your blades.
Idea: If you do crafts often, you might want to shop at a thrift store or yard sale for a cheap old craft blender and food processor like I own. They are indestructible at 1.00 a machine. Nobody cares what you try to do in them.
Step Five: The Mess Starts
Take your blended pulp slime and scoop it into your dipping container that holds about 4-inches of water and a splash of cheap fabric softener. Roll-up your sleeves, add your hands to this gooey mess and start mixing. You are separating the pulp slime into the clean water so that no tiny clumps remain.
Step Six: Getting Pulp Paper Onto Your Mold
With your hands still in the water, give one last good mix pushing any paper pulp on the bottom of your water container up toward the top of the water. Quickly grab your screen in a frame and slide it into the sink under the floating paper pulp. Let everything sit for a minute to allow floating particles to settle. Gently pull your screen straight up while keeping it level in the water.
Your goal on this step is to completely cover your screen with the extremely tiny pieces of pulp in the water. You might have to try more than once to get your screen covered without holes showing. Try to make your layer of pulp as thin and even as is possible while you are covering your screen.
Step Seven: Removing Excess Water
After you have a thin layer of paper pulp on your screen, you are going to try to get as much water out of it as you can. Everybody finds their own ways to do this. What you need is something like big squares of bleached blue jean legs, white felt squares, or some other absorbent material that will not leave coloring on your artwork to blot with. You also want something that your paper will not stick to while it is drying; never use more paper to blot with or you will have a mess. Non-textured cloth works best.
Take a piece of blotting material and place it completely over the top of your screen, over top of the paper pulp on top of your screen. Pat it down. Turn this upside down carefully onto your counter or onto a cookie sheet so that the screen part is now facing up.
Push down on the screen with a sponge, to get the first “big” water out. Cover with another piece of material and keep pushing down on this so that it picks up more water. Cover with a dry piece of material and keep going. When you can’t get any more water out of the back side let the paper sit like this for about one-hour.
Very slowly and gently, lift your screen to see if your paper will stay on the material that it is laying on. If it starts to break as you are lifting – stop. Go get your blow-dryer and give the screen a couple of minutes of low gentle air until the paper releases from the screen.
You should now have one piece of paper sitting on top of some very soggy cloth on your counter or on your cookie sheet. Your goal is to flip that soggy mess upside down onto a new dry piece of cloth so that you can get the water-logged cloth off of the back of your paper. Invert your cookie sheet over a new piece of cloth, or use a spatula. Dry in the same manner as before. Turn over onto dry cloth one more time and let sit for a couple of days.
Your make paper project is done.
Paper Ideas:
Special Wedding Flowers: Make different sizes of embroidery hoop round papers to use as centerpiece wedding table flowers. Ruffle edges of papers with scissors, string three together with a long wire from smallest to biggest in the center, add a piece of green florists tape at the bottom to hold wire to the paper. Arrange in pots with ribbons.
Holiday Gift: Trim 6 pages of paper into the same size; add a fancy box, and a note card explaining that you made the paper yourself.
Special Book: Take 4 sheets of paper, print or draw on front and back, staple them together as a special book for somebody special.
