Apples and Honey for a Sweet New Year

Enjoy my bee (honey) video and have a sweet new year.

Who Needs a Label Maker . . . when you have a Papermill

Just-made paper is wonderfully sticky. That, and the fact that it is so beautiful make it the perfect label material for jars of homemade comfort food.

Make a batch of paper pulp, blend it pretty well. If you want to be able to see the writing on the finished label, the pulp should be a uniform, well blended color. But something chunky and multi-colored would look great too.   Use a small can--tomato paste size-- with both ends removed as your template. Place the black mesh screen from the Arnold Grummer Papermill kit atop the kit's large white grid.  Rest the grid and screen on a tray with a lip, to catch the water. Center the can on the screen and pour the pulp into the can. Wait a few seconds for some of the water to drain. Remove the can. You will have a nice, thick, round and very wet label.

Pick up the black mesh screen -- the label will amazingly stay in place-- center the label over the bumpy writing on the front of a sealed jar. Lay the wet label in place. With the mesh screen still in place, sponge the label through the screen, pushing it onto the surface of the jar. The bumps on the jar give the wet label something to adhere to. Keep pressing the label onto the jar--through the mesh screen-- until the screen can peel away easily. Let  the label dry over night.

                 

The dried label will have a somewhat bumpy surface. Very pretty, but hard to write on. You can use letter stamps to print on the label.

Once I labeled my real canned goods, I made a few more.

Have fun!

I can't wait to see what you cook up.

Pre-School Paper Field Trip

Three-, four- and five-year olds visited our paper studio and created these vases.

Pre-schoolers come to our studio for two field trips each summer. On their first visit they all make their own sheets of paper. On  the second trip, they put their skills to use making something out of their own paper. This year they made vases by covering glass jars with their own paper. Each vase is beautiful, they are all different, and each was really truly made by a child. That, in my opinion, is the best kind of children's art project.

Ask any five children what is the best part of making paper and they will tell you it is blending the pulp in the blender. Ask ten children and nine will tell you it's the blender. The tenth child was abstent that day.

Sunflower Vase

Try painting sunflowers -- with paper pulp!

Watch the video to see how to cover a plastic bottle with handmade paper and paint on sunflowers.

Water Lily Card

The water is handmade paper, the lily is made of  pulp laid on the wet paper.
 Brown Card is 5 x 7.

Speckled Paper, the possibilites

Solid card stock sets off the handmade
paper beautifully.

By adding fistfuls of dried petals along with the pulp in the  blender,  you can get beautiful speckled paper. This kind of paper always makes me think of birds; the spotted breast of a thrush, the speckled eggs of a sparrow.

For this sheet I used Arnold Grummer's Botanicals (Rosebuds and Angel Wings).

I made the sheet using a Medium Pour Mold to conserve my botanicals. You can add the botanicals right along with the reclyed paper and blend, the petals are tough. they can stand some blending.

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Both sides of this paper have a unique look, be sure to consider both sides when you are designing a card.

 

Making the Cards

To make the bird card, place the cut shapes onto the model to align, then attatch the overlapping parts-- I use a glue stick. Use the two different sides of one brown sheet of handmade paper for the wing piece and the back/tail peice. Attach the assembled bird to the front of a card using a glue stick.. Place in a paper press.

 

The appearance of the handmade paper can be slightly different on each side. When you have two shapes of the same color that overlap, using the different sides can add texture to your picture.

 

To make the nest on the pink card, I used a collaprint technique. I glued leaf stems and twigs onto a thick sheet of cardboard --the plate.. Then I inked the plate with brown ink. With the front of the card facing down, I rested the card on the inked plate and used a spoon to rub the whole surface.

 

 

 

Use a rubber roller to spread the ink on a piece of smooth plastic or glass. The roll the ink onto the plate.

 

 

 

Once the ink has dried, you can attached the eggs made of speckled paper with a glue stick. Place the card in a press.

 

 

face on a milk carton