Paper Making

For my project, I thought paper making was a good technique to explore due to the theme of ‘letters’. 

What you need:

-paper

-Water

-Blender

-Fabric

-Sponge

-Frames

-Tub

How to do it:

-Rip up paper, we used a variety of recycled paper

-Poor the paper into a large tub, and add some water

-Blend the two together to create pulp (mushed up paper)

-Lay some fabric on the table

-Take your frame so that the part with no mesh is facing upwards, and slowly push it into the tub of pulp.

-Raise the frame, and slowly wiggle it so that any excess water comes out

-Using the sponge, wipe the bottom of the frame (the mesh) to once again soak up the water

-Flip your frame upside down onto the fabric

-Use the sponge again onto the mesh in order to soak up more water

-Carefully peel off the frame

-Leave to dry

To begin, I used a smaller frame to see how they would turn out. When I found it was successful, I then went on to use the larger frame. With these pieces, I decided to add dried flowers as I thought this worked well with my theme of ‘letters’, especially love letters. In an attempt to keep them stuck together, I used somebody’s unsuccessful piece and layered it over sections of the flowers. As well as using flowers, I tore pages out of an old book and put them in the paper. Again, I thought this worked well with my choice of topic so was an obvious material for me to include. I was very happy with how these experiments had turned out, and I would definitely revisit this technique in the future, possibly on a larger scale.