Once the sod was in, time sped up for a while. We soon found ourselves in the new house, but having to wait for the certificate of occupancy before we moved into the house fully. Two weeks after that, we moved my mother-in-law in with us, and we suddenly found ourselves unpacking, juggling our full-time jobs, and doing 24/7 elder care.
The blog took a back seat.
While we were unpacking, I began to realize just how much paper we had been hauling around. Some of the bills, for example, had traveled with me from New Jersey back to Michigan to Iowa to Wisconsin to California to Colorado. It was clearly time to get rid of them. Because much of the paper had my social security number on it, I decided to start shredding it. It didn't take me long to realize that I was going to have a lot to throw out, so I began looking around for something I could make with it.
That's how I started making paper recently.
My first attempts were not good, but I could see the potential.
My most recent attempts are still not where I want them to be, but I can live with them. I'm going to start documenting my experiments mainly so I can figure out what works and doesn't work.
This first experiment was with adding in yarn. I found a ball of thick teal yarn in my stash, cut it into lengths about a half inch long, and then pulled the sections apart.
I tossed the yarn pieces into the water and pulp mixture;
From that point, it was time to play. I purchased a bulk set of paper making frames from Amazon. For experimenting, the small size has been perfect. It took me a while, but I was eventually able to get the pulp mixture reasonably even in the frame:
Once I had the pulp evened out, I made sure that the couch sheet (that I also bought off of Amazon--the couch sheets are made for hand making paper) was ready on my homemade hanging system--a clothes hanger and a couple of clothes pins:
Next up: adding in rose petals.
