Handmade Paper Experiments
A few weeks ago I made two batches of recycled handmade paper. I was trying out a new way to dry the pages, which took about a week & a half, so that is why I am just posting them now!

To make these, I used pages from some old diaries of mine from middle school. The were full of unpleasant memories, and I'd been wanting to get rid of them for a while. So, this was somewhat theraputic. ;)

I tried out a lot of things in these two batches... here is how everything went ~

Experiment
#1 - Food Coloring
I have been using colored paper to add background color to my sheets, but it is hard for me to get used colored paper. (A lot of times I end up adding construction paper, but I would rather recycle & not use new paper.) I have read about using food coloring, so I tried it out... with mixed results.


The food coloring added a great purple color to the water, but when I pulled up the pulp, it was only slightly tinted with the color, mostly the light gray of the pulp. Normally when you use commercial paper dyes, you have to use something called a retention agent ~ this is a liquid you add to the water that charges the paper particles (negatively or positively, I don't remember) so that the dye sticks to the actual pulp, and doesn't just float in the water. When you use the retention agent, the water will actually turn clear as all of the dye sticks to the pulp...

So, I believe the retention agent would have done the same thing with the food coloring.
Good news ~ none of my supplies were even slightly tinted by the dye (like blender, water basin, etc.)


#2 - Shredding fabric into threads
I've been hearing that you can use fabric to actually make paper, but I wasn't sure how well it would blend. I had some fabric cut into small strips, so I ran them through the blender. Some threads were pulled off of the fabric, but most of the strips remained intact. They did get tangled in the blades like I thought, and I removed the threads a few times. It was a nice effect to have the strands spread out through the paper, with the fabric strips as an accent, but there were also a few clumps of thread that did not look nice.

The shredded fabric was used in the paper pictured above. After the food coloring did not show up, I added in some red & blue tissue paper to give it a more true purple color. Here is that paper ~


I have worked a lot with fabric & thread in the paper (since I have a ton of scraps here!)... if you have never used it, here is a tip ~ while the pulp does not really stick to the deckle, the fabric & thread do. They stick to everything! Before you remove the deckle, push down any fabric bits that are hanging on the edge of the deckle. Otherwise they will rip chunks out of your paper.


#3 - Foil Wrapper
The only thing I really did with this paper was to stick in little bits of a orange & silver foiled wrapper that I got off of a hair dye box. The hair dye was a bright red, but did not color my hair at all, so at least I got something good out of it! I tried to chop it up in the blender, but it did nothing, so I had to snip the bits by hand. It took a long time, but I am glad I got some use out of it.

This paper also has yellow construction & colored papers, and gold wrapping paper. There are also orange & yellow fabric strips.



#4 - Pressing Dry
When I have made paper before, I have pressed it overnight, and then ironed it out. The paper would be pretty straight, but after I had the paper laying in a stack for a while, the edges would get curvy. If one paper curved, it effects the rest of the paper. It is not horrible, but I would like to sell some paper, so that I have a reason to make more of it, and it is not good enough for me yet. Here is some of my older paper ~


So, going one someone's advice, I left the paper pressed for over a week to dry slowly. There is a sheet of cloth in between each sheet of paper to absorb the moisture... I changed the sheets constantly the first two days, and at least twice a day for the next week. Finally the paper was really, really dry, and I felt it was safe to remove. I was still nervous that it would still warp (because maybe it was not completely dry), so I placed the stack in the lid of a large cardboard shoebox & placed the heavy box on top (to press it some more, but there would still be more air circulation that if it was pressed under heavy textbooks).

I left it there for another week and just pulled it out to take pictures. This time the edges of the paper had dramatic curves along the sides, but still straight in the middle. Even with all of the time I spent pressing the pages, it dried worse than before.



So, I know this is all a little wordy, but hopefully some other papermakers can learn something from all of this!