Today we are going to learn how to make paper, making your own paper. It's very easy, and it's a great way to use up some of the plant material in your garden because you can dry it and incorporate the flowers, the leaves, some of the herbs into your.
And some of the herbs such as fennel give the paper a really nice smell. Um, you can also use the central oils to set your papers with, if you like, and this is really easy to make, you can use up all kinds of scraps, such as old newspapers, junk mail, whatever all you do is you take your little scraps of paper and tear them up, put them in a container like this.
Um, I have pre torn some of the paper, but just different sizes. I mean, it doesn't have to be real small and I like to use hot water because I just think it feels better to use when you use your hands to work with this and you want to fill this little container full of water like this. Um, I find the more water you have.
Thinner the paper is, and if you're going to use it in a machine such as the cuddle bug, you ever going to one pen paper. Um, okay. And then I'm going to take my hand mixer, put this down in here and just turn it on and mix it up. Um, I'm using up some old seed paper is why it has some color to it. I made some seed paper last night.
Um, got it dried really quick, cut some shapes out of it using my Spellbinders dies and I had a little bit leftover, so I wanted to reuse it. Um, and I'm going to add some fresh seeds because of course you don't want to chop all your seats up with the blender, but you're just basically going to do this to make a slurry, want to make sure you got all your patients.
Good and blended up. You can also use a blender to do this. If you like. Um, I just found using these coffee carrots with the hand point or made it easier because I could work wherever I wanted to. Um, and I could also see what was happening then. Of course, you're going to have some paper stuck to your blender, and you're going to want to kind of get that off there.
So you don't have any waste.
I have something. So my blood drawn, and then I would take these seeds. This is just a hummingbird mixture. I'm going to sprinkle it in. You want to be plentiful with this? So the paper has a lot of seed in it, and I'm going to start in with a spoon just like that.
If you notice bits of paper that didn't get chopped up quite as well as you'd like. If that's okay, it's going to give your paper a little bit of a texture. And then what I'm going to do is take this container. And this is just for boards with some screen on it. This is what I'm going to make my paper in.
I'm going to carefully pour this through just like this, making sure just to get a thin layer of the paper, because I really don't want. Uh, thick paper because I am going to run this through my cuddle bug. If you get some pieces like this, you can just pick them out. Um, like I said, when you use my hands to kind of press this around, to see where I think I'm at.
Okay. Going to add a little bit more here. I don't think I have quite as much paper as I would like.
And once I'm satisfied that I have a thin layer of this slurry on my seed or on my little paper making mat, then what I'm going to do is take a sponge and I'm just going to press this because what I'm doing is trying to absorb as much of the water as possible. What's your want to squeeze your sponge out.
And here I found a few spots that could use a little bit more of the slurry. So I'm just going to take my spoon like this, and I'm going to kind of fill it in. So one of the tricks was sea paper. If you're going to put seeds in it is you want to make sure you get dry as quickly as. And some tips that I have found for doing that include running it through my cuddle bug, because the pressure of the plates pressing against it helps to squeeze some of the water out.
And the other thing that I do is I let it dry on either on the backside. Or on my cuddle bug plates and I way just, um, you could use newspaper, but I use these little napkins and I just play a double layer down and let it absorb. And I kind of pat the top with, uh, another double layer and I changed that twice before I let it dry on its own.
And again, I've got, I'm still getting this just a little thin. Um, usually I stand up when I do this, so I'm actually looking over the top of it. It was kind of hard to position the camera so you could see this and I could stand up. So that's why I'm setting down here just a little lower than normal. Um, okay.
And then, like I said, when I'm happy with it, it doesn't have to be perfect or depends on what you're going to do with it. I just take one of my cuddle bug plates, put it like this. I flip it over kind of tap on this a little bit. Cause you don't want to tear your paper up. Of course. Take it off. And there you go.
Now, all I have to do is run this through my machine with the other plates. To press some more the water out and then lay it on some paper towels to help absorb the water. And if you don't have a cuddle bug, you can just use the paper towel method, just be sure to press on it. Because as I said, you don't want these seeds to start germinating before the paper actually dries.
And that's all there is to making paper. I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you will try your hand at making paper at home.