SUNDAY SNIPPETS - POSTED ON A MONDAY!

Hi Everyone

Here with a post that shows you what I have been playing with "on and off" over the last week or so using what can only be called snippets .. .. .. .. .. old envelopes, small offcuts that would normally go into my snippet box and old receipts/flyers etc that were sitting waiting to go for recycling.

Yep, I played with the contents of our shredder .. .. .. .. and made paper!!  

Plenty of trial and error, but lots of fun. 

It all started when I watched this lady here on YouTube on my IPad while sitting alongside Mum in the hope she would wake up (and be in a good mood) .. .. .. and as always one video takes you to another and then another and by the end I just knew I wanted to try and make my own paper.  Just search YouTube for “making handmade paper” and you can can easily say goodbye to at least an hour of your life! 

Quite a few videos that I watched talked about a "mould and deckle" which basically looks like two frames hinged together ... .. .. .. but I ordered just the most basic frames from Amazon just to have an initial play .. .. .. and they have worked "pretty well" for me so far.  Should I continue to make paper on a regular basis I “might” consider a mould and deckle, but they do look a bit more cumbersome to use.  

Had my Dad still been alive he would have knocked me up loads in lots of sizes in no time at all!  He loved woodwork and made so many things. 

No good relying on Mr Heart to come to my rescue in making anything useful .. .. .. unfortunately his definition of DIY is "don't involve yourself".  LOL!!

But these are mine, still looking like new after lots of use (not that I have used the largest one yet).

So after watching various videos my papermaking journey began bright and early one morning .. .. .. .. lots of trial and error but I wasn't going to give up easily.

My first attempts were exciting to make but ended up far too thick once dried "bordering on being cardboard LOL!!.  When wet they were quite dark too because of the ink that came out of various snippets, but when left to dry overnight on a cooling rack they lightened up considerably and were much more pleasing to the eye.  As the first set came out so thick I introduced a wooden rolling pin into the equation and flattened my wet paper more between two pieces of thin fabric sitting on top of an old towel (this also squoze a bit extra water out too and sped up the drying process).  But I am slowly getting the hang of making them thinner when using just the frames .. .. .. and reducing the amount of slurry I put into the water bath helped.

I definitely went overboard with the initial amount of slurry I produced, and ran out of space to try/dry any more so I strained what I had left through a sieve to remove most of the water and saved the rest in an airtight container until the next day when I started again. 

So here we go with some of my attempts !!  

These were the first plain ultra thick ones .. .. .. and a bit wrinkly .. .. but I still have plans for them

On the next attempt I introduced some guilding flakes and loved how more of the coloured shreddings made an appearance.  I also made them a bit thinner with the rolling pin.  Much happier with these.

Next I tried adding re-inker into the water bath to try and have patches of colour - I think I could have been more heavy handed

and finally the last set which I am fairly happy with, ideally I wanted to be able to add dried flower petals but as I didn't have any I went for thin die cuts.

So there we go a small sample of my escapades .. .. .. plenty more ideas buzzing through my head and things I would like to add to the paper.  Some sites have mentioned adding seeds and then the paper can be planted in the garden later. 

Of course there are lots more sheets I have made, choosing to just use the small frame whilst practising.  I certainly need to do lots more of that, that's for sure.  I hope I manage to master it eventually.

What did make me smile were instructions which said if you use a blender to make your initial pulp then you aren't to use the blender for food processing any more .. .. .. .. because of any ink/dye residue that might be contained in the pulp which could stay in your blender despite washing thoroughly. 

I used a hand blender .. .. so no more blended soup in the Home of Hearts!

But how many portions of fish and chips must we all have eaten that years ago were wrapped in newspaper?!?!?!? and I swear blind they tasted much better in those days too.

A search on YouTube will bring you up lots of videos if you want to be entertained on the subject even further.

But in the meantime here is my snippet make for taking over to the Snippets Playground.  My first card using handmade paper!

Have a good week everyone!