We Made Paper!

Today we embarked on a different type of journey for the day and made new paper using old paper, giving old paper a new lease on life.

What you need:

Paper - Old newspapers or anything not shiny.

Frame made out of wood

Fly screen

Water

Bucker

Blender

Staple gun

Paper Towel

Sponges

Scissors

Bowl

7. Now let the water drain out and place your frame on a table/ may be best if you put a towel down so your table won't get wet.

Steps:

1. First, we stapled our flyscreen onto our wooden frame using the staple gun, making sure we pull the screen tight, cut off any excess screen as you do not need any over hang.

2. Ripped up the paper into small pieces about 2 cm in size and put them into a bowl to keep them from going all over the floor.

3. Now we put our paper into the blender and add 500ml water, blend up and add extra water if you need to as sometimes you need to add more until the paper is all cut up and mushy.

4. Put the blended paper into the bucket, now repeat step 3 until you have used all the ripped paper or you feel you have enough.

5. Once all your paper is blended and in the bucket its time to fill your bucket up with water.

6. Get your ready-made frame and dunk it into the water and you will see the loose paper on the screen.

7. Now let the water drain out and place your frame on a table/ maybe best if you put a towel down so your table won't get wet.

8. Using the sponge carefully place on top on the paper and push softly, squeeze out excess water and re do again.

9. Place some paper towel over the top and quickly flip over the frame and gently tap on the screen to get the paper out.

10. Now the paper is out, uses the sponge and soak up more water, squeeze out the excess use another paper towel to soak up any extra water

11. Carefully more the paper you have just made on the paper towel into a dry sunny spot and leave to dry.

12. Continue with the above till you have run out of paper mush in the water.

13. The paper may take a day or 2 to dry.

Note: This is how we made our paper, there is many ways to make paper but this is what worked best for us, you may also find different ways you like to get the paper in your frame, just watch the thickness, the thicker the the paper the longer it will take to dry.

If you have any tips for next time please let us know in the comments.