Making Paper
Keep all your scraps!
I try to throw as little paper away as I can. Everything but glue covered newspaper gets kept in a bag for future use. Some cut offs from my marbled or paste papers become bookmarks and I’ve found trimmings from the book edges can be useful for padding out my basket for craft fairs. The paper I use as endpapers often come with the grain direction the wrong way so I need two A3 sheets to get 2 A4 endpapers… It all gets saved. Any why… to make paper of course!!
Mould and deckle
The most important piece of equipment for making paper is a mould and deckle. You can buy them online, but true to form I made mine myself with some fine wire mesh, scrap wood, felt and a lot of varnish! Mine is slightly bigger than A4 as I’ve found the paper shrinks a little in drying. You also need a piece of cloth for each piece of paper you are planning to make, I read that felt is supposed to work well but I prefer to use pieces of cut up canvas.
Soak your paper
The first step in making paper is to soak your scraps overnight. I use a basin I bought specifically for this purpose as I wanted everything to be as clean as possible. How much do you use? Less than I did! I took about a quarter of the paper I’ve saved over the past six months and it ended up being far too much!
Blending your paper
I used a fairly robust hand held blender for my paper, being careful to stop if it started to feel warm. This is where I discovered I had far too much paper in my tub. Removing a good bit and adding more water did the trick though I was still cautious. More than once I found a rogue strip of bookcloth wrapped round the blade so keep checking it (turn it off first of course!) The mush you are left with is called the slurry, this is what will become your lovely new sheets of paper!
The fun part… panning for paper!
Half fill a large tub with water (I use a plastic storage tub). Then start adding your slurry with a jug. To start with you’ll need to add a fair bit and then just top it up as you go along when things start to feel a bit thin. Swirl your added slurry around in the tub with your hands. Wear an apron and make sure there’s nothing nearby that you want to get wet… it may be just me but I got pretty wet during the process.
Slide your mould and deckle to the bottom of the tub and raise it, while it’s still got plenty of water in it tilt it from side to side as if you are panning for gold, this will help keep your paper even. Set your filled mould and deckle on the side of the tub to drip a bit.
The tricky part… turning the paper out
Remove the frame from the mould and deckle. Your paper should then be sitting on top of the wire mesh. Put a piece of cloth on the table, rest the edge of the deckle closest to you on the edge of the cloth and swing it gently but firmly down so the whole is on the cloth. At this point take a large sponge - as you can see I use a mop head - and push down on the wire, wringing the sponge out over your tub. When you feel you’ve got enough water out you can remove the deckle. Take the side closest to you and swing it up. The paper should now be attached to the cloth. If you don’t get this right first time, don’t worry - I didn’t!
Drying the paper
Some people stack their sheets of cloth and paper and put a bunch of them into a press to squeeze out the water. I don’t want to get my press wet so I just clip them to coat hangers and put them into the hot press (airing cupboard) overnight or until they are dry. This means my paper is thicker and a bit rougher than it would otherwise be but I’m fine with this!
The end result … handmade paper!
Once the paper in the hot press is dry it’s easy to peel it off the cloth. The sheets are always a bit rough and ready so I iron them flat. Don’t do this until they are completely dry though or the iron will press the sheets thinner and make them very uneven. (speaking from experience!).
I only had enough coat hangers and clothes pegs to do 23 sheets at a time so I spent all week making paper! I tried adding acrylic paint to the slurry a couple of times, first blue, then black but it only had a small effect on the colour of the end result so I probably won’t do that again. Once you’ve made enough paper as you can bear you can strain the left overs from your tub and save any leftover scraps for the next time!
As I mentioned earlier I used far to much of my scrap paper at one go. A week later however I now have almost 100 sheets of brand new paper! You can see that it is a bit rough and there are quite a few specks of paper that didn’t blend, but I like it! I’d originally set out thinking that I would use the sheets as endpapers but am now thinking that they’ll make good covers, so I’ve backed a few with black paper and sprayed them with a sealant to protect them from the elements.
