Handmade paper is surprisingly easy to make at home and is great fun!
After a week of making tetrahedrons and hot air balloons out of coloured card we decided to shred the offcuts and have a bit of fun.
We shred our confidential waste paper so we had a big bag of white shredded paper too.
First of all, the shredded paper was turned into a nest for some toy dinosaurs.
The next day we set to making our own paper.
What you’ll need:
Shredded paper (if you don’t have a shredder you can tear it up into little pieces)
A plastic tray (we use a clean cat litter tray for lots of our crafty antics)
Lots of all purpose cloths (you can pick up a pack of these for as little as 35p)
A large sponge
Aluminium mesh sheets (this is used for car bodywork repairs and you can find it in places like Halfords or from Amazon).
Handheld blender stick or blender
A flat surface to work where it doesn’t matter if it gets wet: tiled kitchen floor, garden, plastic sheeting laid down.
What to do:
Shred or tear into little pieces some paper from your recycling bin.
Put two or three big handfuls into a tray deep enough to hold 3 inches of water.
Fill with 3 inches ish of water.
Blend to a pulp with a handheld blender stick (if you don’t have one you can pulp in a blender and transfer to the tray).
Set out the all purpose cloths in a pile next to the tray.
Immerse the aluminium sheet in the pulp and lift up gently and evenly and leave to drain for a few seconds.
Carefully, place the sheet pulp side down onto an all purpose cloth.
Leave the mesh on top and use the sponge to sponge the excess water from the paper.
Carefully lift off the aluminium sheet, place another all purpose cloth on the top and leave to dry.
Repeat the process until all the pulp is used up (the first few sheets are quite thick and further sheets are thinner as the pulp gets used up).
We made about 8 sheets of paper using the 3 handfuls of shredded paper.
Leave to dry on a flat surface overnight.
Once dry, peel the paper off the all purpose cloths.
Paint, draw, cut, glue and get creative with your very own handmade paper.
Place the aluminium sheet into the water and immerse completely.
Our kitchen floor is tiled so we left our paper there overnight to dry.
Place the aluminium sheet into the water and immerse completely.
Our kitchen floor is tiled so we left our paper there overnight to dry.
