Making paper while the wind blows.

I see that my friend A has blogged about our papermaking exploits last week -

http://kittystitch.blogspot.com/

so I thought I would too. At the time it seemed like a bit of a disaster – but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight it wasn’t so bad after all.

I have made paper before, several times. On a warm sunny day I have been known to soak the contents of the shredder bin, go into the garden and make a wonderful mess. [N.B. Don’t do this if you have shredded a credit card, unless you want to blunt your blender blades and have sharp bits in your paper. Ask me how I know.]

However last week all sorts of things seemed to go wrong. I have come to the conclusion that there are some things I can do in a room full of people, but paper making isn’t one of them.

However – before my blender blew up I did manage to produce some pieces: these are the best ones.

This one uses a child’s play-doh cutter as a stencil. They are meant to be whales - the shape of the cutter made it difficult to get the paper pulp into all the corners. One of my paper making books suggests using a turkey baster to put the pulp in. Now why didn’t I read the book before the lesson?

The top one is cast over a wooden moulding from B&Q – pulp kindly supplied by my friend A. [Hence the lime green.] The bottom one was done by putting squeezed out pulp into the top of a cat food container – can’t remember the brand as quality control usually has to make do with Sainsbury’s cheapo cat food – this was a Christmas present!]

This was embossed with a plastic doyley from the £ shop. I got the shape by using a circle of plastic canvas as a mould.

To be continued …