leigh ann

Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. On a random day at the end of February this purchased a paper shredder and sat down to make homemade paper.

Setting aside the fact that the paper shredder is INSANELY LOUD. INCREDIBLY MAKING LOUD NOISE MACHINE. The actual shredding was kind of fun. I made it a game to see if I can ready the next set of paper before that others stop shredding cause I had it on auto-mode. Due to the presence of cats I turn it off and unplug it when not in use.

Eventually I ended with a massive amount of shredded paper. I’ve been saving paper for basically a year now because I’ve been planning to make paper for just that long and even longer. I have the nastiest habit of letting the world pass me by.

Our entire household sat down a while back to make paper for the first time and manually shredding the paper put all of us in a state of exhaustion that by the time we put it to soak we were all tapped out. The soaked paper got thrown out. This was a main reason for making the leap to get the shredder. Damn, did it make the world of a difference.

After the shredding I grabbed a whole heap of shreds and threw them into a pot with boiling water and let it sit on the stove for a few hours. Most places say an hour or overnight so I chose an estimate inbetween because I wanted to do this no excuses start to finish.

Once the waiting period was over it was time to really begin.

Surrounded by my tools of the trade, including a thrift store garnered blender that really did the job, I began the process.

My friend Zelda made the mould and deckle which was pretty dang impressive. I didn’t gain the handsy creative skill in my character creation screen so shoutout to her for that actually. It held up well and picked up the paper pulp pretty evenly.

The first sheet took a bit of finagling and guesswork to determine the best process on how to turn it over but it also ended up being one of the best pieces that I produced?

Looking back I’d blend the pulp a whole lot more because I still ended up with some big chunks but to be fair they gave the paper some personality. It’s giving homemade entirely.

In the end I also didn’t end up adding enough pulp in because the paper ended coming out thinner. I ended up with some frayed edges and in order to take up less space in the living room I moved the papers before they completely dried so I ripped a few that way.

But I was a roll. I was determined to use all the pulp I processed that day before I stopped. And I did. Even if I ended up with some thinner sheets. I don’t remember how many pages I made in total but keeping the cats off of the paper was a fulltime job!!

In the end I had to cover the drying pages with more towels because the cats wanted to touch it so bad. Luckily Jean’s vigil took so much out of her she was ready to nap while everything dried.

She’s not a big cuddler so the paper making must have pleased her a lot to be granted this privilege.

This was supposed to be a experiment but honestly it turned out better than I could have expected. I have notes for what to do next time (more pulp, less moving around, locking the cats in the room [jk]) but really this was such a rousing success for a first time endeavor.

Also, the scream I let out when I came home and my roommate showed me that it survived the printer. Look at that beauty!

Since its creation the paper has been involved in one a many projects. Notebooks, maps, scrapbooking and most recently notes for our Fallout TTRPG.

Sadly, I haven’t been able to make more since this attempt. This was the same weekend I almost burnt my entire hand off. That healed beautifully by the way. Just some at some physio to get my mobility back.

I might try next weekend.