Easy Homemade Paper

My daughters come home with so many papers that eventually end up in recycling or the trash that I wanted to do something with them. Let’s face it, our darling kids’ artwork sometimes just isn’t artwork and there is only so much room on the refrigerator for those little doodles. I felt bad being so wasteful with their papers but what is there to do with them?

While looking to buy a pack of thank you cards at the store I saw some that were made from recycled paper and had the idea to do that with the girls’ papers. Not only could I declutter the girls’ papers, but I could do a craft. Win-win.

This craft is actually so easy that the girls were able to do it with me. They were excited to have their papers turned into something new!

Supplies:

Blender

2 Picture frames

Window Screen

Sponge

Shredded paper

Large plastic tub

Towels

I had a few extra picture frames that were laying around so I used those to create the screen, which I also had some window screen in the garage. Somehow, I tend to have all my craft supplies things on hand all the time! Maybe I am more of a hoarder than I thought. . . Anyway, I stapled the screen to the back of an 8”x10” frame. If you don't have any extra frames lying around, you can purchase sets through Amazon. I have included a link to a fairly inexpensive set below the instructions.

I have seen this done without the use of a blender, but I liked the finely ground texture. Plus, when I did this forever ago, we used a blend then and I stick to what I know. We used ten shredded sheets of paper. I you do not have a shredder, you could easily tear them as the the blender will process them well enough. Place your paper in the blender and add enough water to cover them paper. Blend until a pulp is created and there are no chunks of paper left. In the large plastic bin, add water - I didn't do any precise measuring here. I filled the bin half way with water. Add the pulp to the water in the bin and mix it with your hand. You can see in my pictures that I attempted to add food coloring to the mixture because I wanted a light yellow tint. It didn't work. I only made my water yellow.

With the frames placed back to back and secured, dip the frame and deckle into the water at an angle. As you bring the frames back to the top, shimmy it a bit (think of gold mining or sand through a sieve). Allow as much water to drain as possible. I turned mine on all four sides to allow water to drain. This can get a bit messy! If you are planning on adding in any extras, do it now. I chose not to add in the dried flowers my daughters did because they were rather bulky. If you are doing add ons, followed by another layer of paper pulp. This is best if you spoon the pulp over and allow to drain.

Now, remove the top frame carefully. You will not have nice smooth edges but you don't want them to be uneven by allowing the frame to scrape them. Flip the deckle, paper side down, onto a towel. Before removing the deckle from the paper, use a sponge to sponge out more water. Carefully life the deckle and allow the paper to set dry. Depending on the thickness of your pulp and humidity of the space, it can take up to 3 days to dry completely. Ours took about 30 hours.


I wasn't sure if I could print on the paper, so I did a few test runs, which you can see below. Printing works super well but you need to make sure the paper is flat. I didn't press my paper because I was so excited to try it, so the ink is smeared or stray in a few places. The flowers were done with a simply ink jet printer and the feather and birds done with my Silhouette Cameo.

If you use these instructions to make your own, please comment and share below!

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