Making Paper with Children

This was my daughter's idea. She wanted a kit for Christmas. I order the smallest kit at the Arnold Grummer site. It was smaller than I expected, but I think also quite necessary. The screens included, along with the other tools, make for an easy project. I didn't follow the directions because we never have tin cans on hand, so I made up my own.
1) Rip up small pieces of card stock that are in approximately the same color family. I have a small box of scrap card stock that I can't discard. This is the perfect use for all of those scraps.
2) Lay out a couple of towels on the counter. Top the towels with a paper towel or two. Put the support screen and bottom screen on the paper towel.
3) Place scraps and a bit of water in the blender. How much water? Enough to make the pulp mixture to about the consistency of thick pancake batter? Vague enough? Run the blender until the mixture is smooth-ish.
4) Take a turkey baster and suck up some paper pulp. Squirt the pulp onto the screen as evenly as possibly. Continue until the screen is covered.

Note: The pulp/paper dried to a much lighter color. Our end result wasn't "make your eyes bleed orange".

5) Cover the pulp with the top screen and begin smoothing it out with the little brick like tool from the kit. You will squeeze a good deal of water and paper pulp out onto the surrounding surface. Paper pulp can be rather destructive to household appliances, so I recommend the paper towel to catch the pulp and the double layer of towels to absorb the water.
6) Sponge out as much extra water as possible with a common sponge.
7) Remove top screen and flip the paper onto a couch sheet, which will absorb more water and make the paper easy to remove from the screens.
8) Let air dry on a piece of foil or something. I attempted to iron one of the sheets and didn't like the way it turned out, so air drying it was.

There are also proper instructions here. You should probably read that in addition to mine.

We made little packets out of our paper by folding in the corners (careful not to tear!). I printed out a highly collectible, limited edition black and white photo of my children and glued it in the center. Fold up, wrap with ribbon or yarn or something and voila!

If not for the drying time, this would make a great group project. My children loved sitting at the table shredding paper. They loved squirting the pulp onto the screen and the accompanying amusing noises the baster made. They loved squirting water at each other with the baster after I threw them out of the kitchen. Ha, ha! Only kidding of course. I would never do such a thing. And really, again - no paper pulp down the garbage disposal or into the washing machine. Rinse your blender and empty it outside, but not on your plants either.

This is a while away, but I read about making seed paper and I thought that would be the perfect little treat to leave on neighbors doors for May Day. After an exhausting couple of minutes searching for directions, I give up. I'm assuming you just sprinkle the seeds onto the pulp which has been squirted onto the screens prior to all blotting and smoothing. Probably you'd skip mixing the seeds in the blender. I can't imagine that would speed germination. :) If anyone has done this, feel free to comment with tips. I detailed what worked well at our house but I'm sure there are many methods.

Comments

[Kimberly]

How very lovely!

BTW...I have a little "award" for you over at my blog!

[Cheryl M.]

cute! I've always wanted to do this, but never have...I love the orange color :)

[Theresa]

Beautiful! I love it! And now I have something I can do with all those cardstock scraps I've been saving!

[Michelle]

My daughter would love this! We spent a day at the science museum for children in St Paul on the way to our new home and my oldest made paper like you did for probably 2 hours. Kudos to you for allowing such a fun filled (and messy) project at home!

[Donna]

What a great project...another to add on to my "to do" list :-)

[Dana]

Oh, I love these! I'm thinking about buying the kit. We've made paper before, but just used newspaper. This might be another project we try while my dd is sick - we have a screen from another kit. I'll just try it with some construction paper or something. Hmmm....

[Lynn in Tucson]

You can create a very simple, homemade screen by stretching out a wire hanger and then pulling panty hose over it, nice and tight. Or using embroidery hoops (if you don't mind the wooden ones getting warped or the metal ones getting rusty). The hangers are great to use with a group (if you do the tub-full-of-water method, as described on the link you provided) - everyone's paper can just dry in place on the screens and then be peeled off.

[katie]

Fantastic!
And beautiful picture... thanks for typing this up and sharing your sources.

[Sham wow]

Good job but can we use a cloth instead of a paper towel?

-John