Making your own paper can be fun and rewarding. You can add fun bits, seeds, petals, pot pourri, glitter, threads, seeds, buttons, and bits of fabric, to contribute to the individual look of your paper.
For this tutorial you will need:
A bag of shredded paper
A cat litter tray
An old washing up bowl
Blender
Pan and electric ring
Deckle or food processor lid
A wad of newspaper
J-cloths or old T-towels
PVA glue
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Most of these items you can find around the house. Ideally pre-soak your paper the night before making it in an old washing up bowl.
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If you want your paper to be white, then at this stage put the shredded paper in a pan of water, bring to the boil and simmer for twenty minutes. The boiling process dissolves most of the printed inks and helps to break the consistency of the paper down.
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When the water has cooled, scoop up a handful of shredded paper and put into the blender. It should be approximately less than one third full.
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Cover the scoop with two-thirds water. Make sure there is a gap of at least 5cms between top level of the water and the lid of the blender before securing the lid and blending in several short, sharp goes. DO NOT OVER FILL THE BLENDER, as this will result in shorting the blender and the possibility of electric shock. See pic below.
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When you are satisfied with the blended result, pour the contents into a cat litter tray. Fine blended paper makes thin paper and thick blended paper with less water tends to make stiffer paper. Once the cat litter tray is about half full, you can start to use the deckle or food processor lid to make the paper.
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At this stage, you can add the seeds, petals, threads, glitter or whatever else is going to make your paper special. Add it into the cat litter tray and mix it round. You can add PVA at this point to make the paper bind together, however if your using a deckle, then make sure you wash the deckle very well immediately afterwards, otherwise the mesh will become blocked.
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Prepare the bed of newspapers and either tea towels or kitchen cloth, I've made it with both, and it depends what effect you want. Sometimes kitchen cloth puts fold in your paper, which you can't get out once it's in drying mode. Take your deckle or food processor lid, and put it under the mix when it surfaces, turn it over, and place on your pre-prepared bed of newspapers and cloth.
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Build up your layers so that you have a stack of wet paper and newspapers. It's quite handy to be near a sink at this point, as everything starts to get very wet.
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When you have finished you can pour the paper bits into a sieve and throw the residue away. If you have a handy main drain, then pour away the pulp. Do not throw the pulp un-sieved down the sink; otherwise you may block your sink!