Following on from my papermaking lesson recently I had my second go on Monday with my own shredded paper. As could be seen from my previous post here I had shredded some of the paper I used to print on during my recent course. I kept the printed area and plain paper surround separate whilst soaking and pulping. This week I used the plain cartridge paper offcuts and the printed areas from cartridge and kozo paper mixed.
I slightly over-pulped the white cartridge fibre and ended up with some very fine paper, probably around 50-60gsm mainly. I stopped pulping earlier with the printed paper and once the two pulps were mixed I had some lovely coloured inclusions. However, obviously, much of the inks mixed, giving me a light grey paper base.
Left: the mixed pulp on the deckle. Right: the wet paper sheet on the couching cloth ready for pressing.
Having taken advice, I decided not to dry my sheets in the sun as I did previously. So I took them home, still wet on the couching cloths, and laid them out on the bathroom floor.
I had made a selection of pristine white and mixed-fibre grey A4 pages and was delighted with them until I turned around to see one of my dogs coming to explore what I was up to. He managed to trample across 8 sheets before I got him out of the room!!
I’ll just print on some interesting paper with dog paw marks and toe holes in now, I guess. Little terror.
Finished paper, some white and some pale grey, with a close-up of the roughly pulped print inclusions.
Next week I’ll have another go and make the paper thicker so I can, hopefully, both print and stitch on it.
Leave a Reply to Claire BCancel reply