Making Paper

A while ago I made some homemade paper. Here's how to do it! First you need:

• A blender of some sort. I'm using a Vitamix.
  
• Elmer's glue. This helps hold the paper together
  
• Any old paper that you have. I'm using old coloring pages (we have lots of little kids)
  
• Food coloring... unless you just want an off-white piece of paper.
  
• And what I call a 'paper maker'. All this is is a wooden frame with Cross stitch fabric glued on the back. If you don't have a 'paper make' a piece of fabric that strains water well will do!

In the picture I have Pam. You actually don't need this.

Depending on how well your blender blends you may or may not have to tear the paper up.

This is where the glue comes in. Just squirt some glue in with the paper. This helps to hold the whole thing together. Also, add your food coloring and water. Don't worry about putting to much water in your mixture. The more water that you have, the easier it will be to spread out the pulp. However, if you put WaY to much water in there, it will take a longer time to dry.

After this let the blender take over!

Here is the result... weirdo pulp :P

Spread the 'weirdo pulp' over your fabric or into the paper maker. If your pulp won't spread add some more water. Also, if it doesn't work the first time, you can always stick it back in the blender, add more water and paper (if necessary) and give it a whizz. If you are just making a small piece of paper you may be able to use an iron and iron it dry. However, if you are making a large piece of paper an iron won't work. I tried and the paper ended up sticking to the bottom of the iron. Oh, if you are wondering what the Pam was for, I thought that if I greased the bottom of the iron before ironing the paper it might work a little better. It didn't. I got the same results as when I didn't use Pam. All that was accomplished was that the house smelled like I had been baking cookies :D :D ::).

And here is my finished product:

The bow is made out of gum wrapping paper as is the big 'E'. Then, I just put a little bit of contrast in the picture with the gold bow. Well, I hope that this works out for you (if you try it, of course ;)