What a Waste of Time!

Do you have that problem that plagues so many people of too much time? Do you find yourself pacing from wall to wall trying to think of something, anything to do? Well do we have the hobby for you. We decided, a touch of foolishly, to make all of our invitations for our wedding. To add to the challenge we also chose to make all of the paper...and infused the paper with lavender oil...and embed the paper with lavender seeds. Needless to say all this takes time, but we would still do it again. Creating paper from slush is a magical and stunningly peaceful experience. Paper itself is so powerful to our world, a necessary medium for the written word that it feels extra special to be able to create it. This is how we did it if anybody wishes to follow in our footsteps.

Step One: Make a Deckle and Frame

A deckle and frame is what is used to strain the pulp creating the sheet of paper. To make one you need two frames. Taking the word frame to heart we used actual picture frames, but if you feel ambitous you can make your own relatively easily. You then need to purchase a small piece of screen and stretch this over one of the frames. The screen can be stapled or tacked into place. The other frame (now called the deckle) is left alone.

Step Two: Choose your Source of Fiber

Making the pulp can involve any number of plant fibers that you may wish to invest, from grass to carrots. You can also buy cotton rag from paper making suppliers, this creates very high quality paper, but it is a little pricey. The simplest way, which is what we chose, is to recycle already used paper. This could be junk mail or newspaper or construction paper or whatever else you can find. We used office paper, that we shredded using a paper shredder. You could spend the time ripping and cutting the papper, but a shredder is very helpful. This shredded paper is then soaked overnight in a bucket of water.

Step Three: Make the Pulp

Put about a handful of the soaking paper into a blender and fill with water. Again a blender is not absolutely necessary, but the alternatie (mortar and pestle) is annoying. Here is also the time to throw in some extras such as dyes or other colored papers. This is when we added scent, in our case we decided upon lavender. Finally, we added liquid starch. This because the fibers of the paper are looser than in commercially produced paper and when you attempt to write upon it the ink bleeds. Starch or gelatin are often used to stop this from happening. Blend all this together on a low speed. Obviously, how long you blend determines how smooth your resulting pulp will be. Leaving it chunky will result in some unique looking paper, but smoother is slightly easier to work with. Pour this slurry into a tub of water big enough to submerge your Deckle and Frame.

Step Four: Time to Make the Paper

At this point you should have a tub of diluted paper mush. We wanted to embed seed into our sheet so we added a packet of lavender seeds. You can also throw in flower petals or small plants or really anything else that comes to mind. Make sure to stir up everything real good like. Now assemble your deckle and frame, by placing the deckle (no screen) on top of the frame (screen). This is then submerged briefly in the tub and pulled out. Slowly the water will drain out leaving the pulp resting on top of the screen. Lift off the deckle and set it aside, be careful not to let water drops fall unto the newly formed sheet. Take a sponge and dab at the underside of the screen, sucking out as much water as possible.

Step Five: Couching Tiger

This is the hardest and most rewarding part: couching your paper. Obviously you could just leave the paper on the screen until it dries, but if you wanted to do numerous pieces of paper this would be an even more time consuming process than it already is. The solution is to transfer your sheet onto a piece of cloth, called couching. Most soucres that we found recommend couching onto felt, this didn't work very well for us, but, when successful, gave the paper a very cool texture. Each fabric can provide a different texture depending on what you are looking for. We found muslin to work the best. You have two options on couching: first, apply the fabric on top of the paper and flip the frame over onto the table. Press around the edge to loosen the paper from the screen. Slowly lift the screen up by one edge, making sure the whole sheet remains on the fabric. The second, more daring, but quicker, is to lay the fabric onto the table and quickly invert the screen on top. This is followed by a rolling motion, again lifting one edge first and praying that your paper has remained behind. You can then stack as many sheets/fabric pieces as you like.

Step Six: Pressing

Once you have decided to quit for the day, you should press the water from the sheets. This can be done by placing the stack of sheet between two boards and standing on them or using C-clamps to apply pressure. A rolling pin can also be used. Or nothing if you don't mind waiting longer. The good thing about pressing is that it helps bind the paper fibers together making the sheet stronger.

Step Seven: Drying

You can just lay your sheets out to let them dry. we chose to hang them up on clothes line. The only problem with these two methods is that when they dry the paper tends to curl up and get wavy. we fixed this using the good old fashioned dictionary method of flattening. There are other methods to dry the sheet flatly that involve thick corrugated cardboard and fans that wearied us to just to read about them.