More Paper Experiments - Paper No 0008

My Dad came to stay for the weekend a while back, and it turns out he's always wanted to make paper, but wasn't sure how to start. So, we had a go. We started with some white cotton? dry pulp fibres, and pulled a few sheets. I don't think he'd realised quite how easy it is to make paper! We then carried on, and added some of my yellow recycled paper - coarsely shredded, then added some lint from the tumble dryer, them added some glitter, and so on. As we were nearing the end of the stack of couching sheets, we decided to add some of my white recycled paper to finish off. Unfortunately, my food mixer died after about 3 seconds, so, what the hell, throw the very coarse white stuff in too! The results are shown below.

My dad went home with all these sheets, and I'm yet to see what he's to do with them. Now, Dad lives in St Ives in Cornwall, and is friends with many of the artists down there, particularly Roy Ray and Jenny Devereux, two of the many well known artists working with paper in St Ives. Check out their websites.

I also understand dad went straight to Truro, and bought all the equipment to make more paper himself. So, watch this space.

Hanging Basket Liner - Paper No 0007

OK, here I was, browsing through the local garden centre when i saw a stack of hanging basket liner. These are the ones made of a papier mache kind of material. They are very cheap, and the quality of the material isn't very high, but pulped in the blender, I experimented making the sheets below. Techniques included layering with other papers, pressing on bubble wrap, etc. Not the best paper, but an interesting exercise following on from my Peat Pot papers!

Paper No. 0007 8x6 in (20x15 cm)

Swap No 0005 - My Handbound Books

Over to Canada this time, to Rhonda at My Handbound Books. I was a little slow off the mark in posting my end of the swap, and consequently, my package from Rhonda arrived before I'd posted mine!

But, i was blown away with Rhonda's generosity. I received 2 chopstick bound books, beautifully wrapped in a handmade, hand printed band. See Rhonda's tutorial to make these here. There was also another notebook, a print, and a selection of marbled and paste papers. All are stunning. Rhonda's tutorial to make paste paper is here.

I thoroughly reccomend Rhonda's blog, its fascinating, and an inspiration. Theres so much on there that I'd like to try and make myself. If mine are only half as good........

I sent Rhonda my usual swap, but as I'd seen what Rhonda had posted before I sent mine, I included one paper from each of the six papers I've made, and as a special treat, I sent Rhonda a pair of the wooden boards I'd made and kept for a rainy day. I'm looking forward to see what Rhonda makes with them.

Swap No 0004 - Guernsey £1 Banknotes

Recently, Mai-Britt from Linen & Silk commented on my origami book diversion, and offered to send a £1 Guernsey Banknote for me to make a Bank-Note-Book from. I was delighted, and offered Mai-Britt a swap, rather than the generous gift on its own. I was more than pleased therefore to receive 3 £1 notes in the post.

I sent Mai-Britt the following for my side of the swap.

Swap No 0003 with Lisa from Parallel Botany

I received my swap items in the post from Lisa at Parallel Botany today. I sent Lisa one of my Bank-Note-Books with bank note paper endpapers, and some sheets of my handmade papers. Heres an image below, and Lisa's kind review of my items can be found here. Lisa sent me one of her delightful par avion notebooks. The cover is Lisa's own handmade paper, and features a brilliant watermark of the books title. The pages inside are a delightful mix of pamphlet stitched plain, lined, squared and other papers. In addition, Lisa sent me an assortment of her other handmade papers, including a notelet and envelope (too good to use!), and some gorgeous joss papers. I'll have to think up something to make with them.

Please visit Lisa's blog - Parallel Botany - It's well worth a browse, and bookmark.

Handmade Paper Sample Book

This is another online purchase. This was less than £1. Its a book of sample handmade papers. There are 12 different papers - 3 sheets of each - total 36 pages. They are a wide and varied set of papers, inc: a snake skin design, a marbled paper, printed papers, embossed papers. Some thick, some thin, most are coloured papers. All cord bound in a beautiful, marbled paper covered, stiff boards. Overall book size is 8.5x6.5 inches ( 22x16 cms ) Does anyone recognise this book? I've purchased a second set from a different vendor also for less than £1. So they must be made in bulk somewhere. I've an idea i will strip out the papers leaving one of each, and adding pages from the lots of other handmade papers i have, so building up a big sample book of papers I've used.

Charlotte Clowes Handmade Paper Still Life Picture

I bought this online recently for less than £5. It's a Charlotte Clowes original. The seller didn't advertise it as such, just calling it a handmade paper picture. See here for Charlottes website. Its beutifully made, and very vibrant - much more so than these images show. It's 9x9 inches (22x22 cms).

Seed Embedded Paper

Heres a freebie I received at work. Its a 2009 calendar, nicely printed on seed embedded paper. The company were playing on the 'eco' side of their business. Anyway, rather than throw it in the bin, I kept it.

I've been looking at it for weeks now, wondering if I shoud bind it in a concertina binding of some sort. Anyway, tonight I decided to see if the seeds are actually live, and i've soaked it in water and put on windowsill to see what happens. If it sprouts, I'll post a pic before i plant it in the garden.

As an aside, I have bought some seeds to put in some of my hand made papers when i get round to it. Wild flower meadow mix, and the old favourite - mustard and cress.

Coptic Stitch in Handmade Plywood Boards - Book No. 0004

Earlier this week I made a small coptic stitch blank book. This is only my second attempt at coptic stitch, and the stitching was less successful than last time - see here. After reading a few other comments on the web, I've come to the conclusion that bigger is better, especially where beginners are concerned (and that's me!). This book, at half the size of my first attempt, is too small, particularly for the thread I've used. I think a bigger book, with a thicker thread would be better. Roll on next time. The pages are made from my Paper No 0001. There are 8 signatures of 12 pages each, totalling 96 pages.

Book No. 0004 - 3x4 in (7.5x10 cm)

The plywood boards, on the other hand, were particularly successful. I have a hige stack of 100's of different wood veneers to use on various woodworking projects. I picked a nice orange coloured veneer. I'm not sure what the wood is though! See my next post, on how to make plywood from veneers.

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Bank Note Paper - Paper No. 0006

At a local auction recently, I bought £1,500's worth of shredded £20 notes (for the sum of £20). The auctioneer looked at me as though I was mad!

I had the idea, of course, to use them as inclusions in sheets of my handmade paper. Using cotton linters as the base, and just a tiny handfull of the scraps of notes, I produced these lovely soft sheets.

Heres a view of the stack of the dozen or so sheets I've pulled so far. And a single sheet

And a close up of a part of the sheet. I'm now going to use these sheets as end papers for my Bank-Note-Books. See here for how you can swap something for one of these Bank-Note-Books, 2 or 3 sheets of my papers, and if you want, a tiny amount of these bank note scraps.

My First Overseas Swap

I completed my second swap today, and my first overseas swap. With Judy from Iowa, I swapped one of my BankNoteBooks and 3 sheets of my handmade paper: for only Judy's second ever handmade book. I'm touched, and its delightful. Its Japanese stab bound, and made from an old macoroni package, with pages cut and folded at different sizes from (I'm assuming) a brown paper bag, with the stitching incorporating bead work. I'm extremely pleased with this swap.

My Home Made Press

I thought you might like to see a picture of my very sturdy home made press. I use this for pressing wet posts of papers, and (when dry) for pressing signatures, etc, for my books. This form of construction is extremely strong, and you get a huge amount of pressuer from even the smallest 1.5 Ton bottle jack that i'm using. A very useful tool. I built it to suit the materials to hand, but it will take A4 sheets if needs be.

Peat-Pot-Paper - Paper No. 0005

Over the weekend, I was clearing out the shed and found a pack of unused peat pots. I noticed that they are cast in a shape, so decided to have a go at making paper with them. So, 2 peat pots torn up in the blender at a time, and 3 blender fulls in the tub. This let me pull 4 sheets, before i had to put another blender full of pulp in tub. The sheets formed very easily, and also couched very easily. They dry quite smooth, and appear reasonably strong.

Next step is to make patterns with seeds in. I'm thinking big sunflower seeds in patterns sandwiched between 2 sheets. Watch this space.

Paper No. 0005 8x6 in (20x15 cm)

Pulp Painting Experiments with 3 Pulps

For this experiment, the 3 pulps used were: The pulps i used for Paper No 0001 & Paper No 0002, and a pulp made from a thin black paper that came as packing in a shoe box. The pulps were blended in the mixer in the usual way, and decanted into saucepans. Then, all of these papers were made using a turkey baster, sucking up the pulp, and laying directly on the mould, with the deckle in place. The hardest part about making these papers was to ensure even pulp thickness. The water was slow to drain too, so that didn't help, and it was mainly guess work, as this was my first attempt at these type of papers. Handy tip is to have a glass of water nearby to suck into the baster between pulps to clear out the remains of the previous colour pulp.

Sunburst. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Beach Through Barred Window. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Weave. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Parallel. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Blocks. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives Circles. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

2 Handmade Paper Purchases

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Heres a couple of images of some framed papers i bought on Ebay. I've taken them from their frames to have a better look at them. .

This sheet has gold leaf? in it, is very soft, and quite thick..

This sheet has threads and silver foil in it, appears to be sized, and is partially translucent.

Both are delightful examples of the papermaking art.

Does anyone recognise them?.

My First Swap

. I completed my first swap today. With Lubna - see Looby Ruby. I swapped one of my BankNoteBooks and 3 sheets of my handmade paper:

for one of Lubna's delightfull stab bound Mini Books 4.5 x 3 in (11x7.5 cm)

If anyone else is interested in a small swap see here for details.

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Curry Paper - Good Enough to Eat? - Paper No. 0004

Well maybe not exactly curry, but the inclusions in this paper are paprika and oregano. Straight out of the kitchen cubboard, and well mixed in the pulp. The paprika leaves delightful orangey red flecks in the paper. There is a very slight paprika smell to the paper too! Good enough to eat?

Paper No 0004 8x6 in (20x15 cm) Paprika & Oregano Inclusions.

Detail of Paper No. 0004 showing the flecks in the paper from the paprika.

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2 More Experimental Sheets

OK, tonight I made these 2 papers. Both experimental. The first one has silk fibres (all the same fibres) sandwiched between 2 sheets, and the second sheet has various different fibres sandwiched. Again, as 'Another Experiment', I should have left it and pressed as a single sheet, without the sandwich.

Sawdust Inclusions Paper - Paper No. 0003

OK, today I made 3 pairs of timber boards to use as book covers at some stage. I've no idea what the wood is, I picked up a big plank about 8mm thick from local reclamation yard. It's a very dark wood, with light stripes, and it chips a bit like fibreglass. My hands were cut to shreds before I'd tamed it! Anyway, once finished, I swept all the sawdust and chips up, and made some more pulp as Paper No 0001, and added a large lot of the sawdust. This is the finished sheet.

Paper No. 0003 8x6 in (20x15 cm) Sawdust Inclusions.

And here is the finished stack of some of the dozen or so sheets I made.