Thursday, May 03, 2007

Papermaking!

Spyder, Sass, and I made paper! Spyder got the idea and recipe from the Beakman's World DVD.

Sass and Spyder shredded two pages of a newspaper. We put it in a blender, one page + one cup of water at a time. (Unfortunately, I didn't think about taking pictures!)

We blended the paper and water into ugly gray goo, then put it into the kitchen sink with about three inches of water. Then we added two tablespoons of Elmer's glue and stirred it around. I really think I added too much water, so I'll cut that down a bit next time.

We used a wire coat hanger as the frame, and stretched pantyhose over the hanger to make the drying surface. We put the frame into the goo/water/glue mixture and captured the fibers to make our paper.

The DVD instructions said to lift it slowly, but it worked better for us to lift it quickly and turn the hanger so that the entire surface was covered. It didn't take long at all (less than a minute) for it to begin to set, and I was able to hang the paper in the shower to dry overnight.

This is what our surface looked like after it dried overnight.


We carefully pulled the paper off of the pantyhose. This was the hardest part for us, partly because I think our mixture was a little too thin. Spyder had to get his hand underneath and push it up to get it started.


Once it was started, he was able to pull the middle, thicker portion.


Here is one of the finished products! You can see some of the larger pieces of newspaper that didn't get blended well, and you can see the torn portion at the edge.


This was a fun, easy craft, and I know we'll do it again. Today we were talking about using the sale flyers that come weekly so that we can have different colors, rather than just light gray.

Fun and easy!

4 comments:

Tara O said...

Next time try bits of colored paper too-great fun and if you are a scrapper you can use acid free paper to make your own. :D

PEZmama said...

My daughter would love doing this. I am going to have to try it... only don't tell her or she will bug me about it every five minutes until we do!

I came over here from your comment on my blog. Thanks for stopping by.

Noodle said...

Tara: Do you have to use one color of paper at a time? I was hoping to use a couple of different colors to create a tie-dye effect. Or will that just make goo of a different gray?

Noodle said...

Pezmama: Thanks for stopping by!

It's quite an easy craft. The most time consuming portion is tearing the paper in little bits, and thankfully, the children didn't mind doing that portion!

If you need better instructions, just ask!