Makers Meet: Paper Making

For our first Makers Meet about three Fridays ago we made paper. We had been expecting three families and ended up with one - thankfully. It was a lot to prepare for and the containers I had for the pulp turned out to be not big enough, so we just had one pulp container going. It was a rainy day so we were inside the studio and the sun wasn't available to dry our papers - we used a toaster oven. We put seeds into some of it, made balls with some to create beads (or blow dart ammunition in my house). We got the lovely green and blue colors by adding the "grass" from our Easter baskets to newspaper. All and all I thought it was a fun day of creating for me, and after our guests left even Coleman gave paper making a shot! He came in and out of the studio to talk and observe, and after seeing the results wanted to give it a try. Max had absolutely no desire to give it a shot, maybe next time.

To make paper at home all you need is a blender, scrap paper, water, a rectangular plastic bucket, a picture frame with a screen stretched onto it. You probably have all these things already - I got a roll of screen at the hardware store for $6.00 and some dollar store frames. This is a good project for outside because it can be messy. I used this YouTube video for a refresher course for myself, it's pretty straight forward. You should give it a try!