making paper while the sun shines

Back in April I entered a competition on the Craft Scotland website to win a copy of Papermaking and Bookbinding: Coastal Inspirations by Joanne B Kaar and was delighted to learn a few weeks ago that I was one of the lucky winners.  I was even more delighted when I received my book last week to find that making paper isn’t the painful experience I remember it to be from my childhood attempts, where the paper ends up all pulpy and useless.  The book also contains all sorts of suggestions for jazzing up your handmade papers and what to do with all that paper you’ve made.  I particularly like the embossing from driftwood idea.

This Instructable describes the very method I used.

On a complete whim today (so wholly unprepared with any sort of shop bought materials) I made my first batch of paper, which is now handing merrily in the bathroom drying slowly – as directed in the book.

Tomorrow I get the iron out to flatten them out and decide what their fate might be.  I can’t decide between labels for my handmade photo notebooks or whether I should print onto them and frame them as works of art.  I kind of like that idea though…such ugly, unnecessary junk turned into art.

Just in case you think we’re really clatty, that grout is in fact pink and not dirty!  We inherited a baby blue and pink bathroom (complete with pink grout and, for some very odd reason, an orange shower tray) when we bought our current house and it’s not up there on the list of priorities to change, in spite of it’s very scary appearance.

Tags: craft, handmade, paper, recycled