Today Was For Paper Making-Photos and Updated to Show Papers Dry

   I decided today was the day for paper making. Not too difficult to dig out all my supplies and get set up. We were in the 20s most of today so didn't want to haul water from the rock setting project outdoors several times during these cold temps. So perfect day for it-and we even had sunshine.

   This batch I really wanted color, so I added lots of tissue paper to the pulp mixture this time-more than I usually do and I think it will pay off. For the rest of the pulp I save magazines like Mary Janes Farm that have lots of color pages and is printed with recycled paper. Also today paying attention to color, along with the blue tissue paper I also looked for recycled papers that had lots of blues in them, otherwise the papers are more greyish do to all the black print. 
   So I am happy with my papers. I got 13 pieces today and only had to redo one of them.  I will know the color more once dry. These also have dry botanicals that I collect in the fall, gold threads, glitters, lavender buds, marigold seeds, and I add on top of the paper those dried dyed flowers, and also this time I added a couple paper cut outs-I figure if those don't stay in after the paper dries I will still have the impression-especially that deer.
    I also wanted to mention that when I make a paper and get it set up with those thick blotting papers (see below) I use a super big and heavy dictionary to weight it down while I make the next piece of paper.
    Many instructions say to iron them til dry-I don't want to do that. Sometimes the papers come out needing to be weighted down a bit after dry-which I will do-but these are handmade "art" papers-just enjoy the process.

as always the photos will enlarge-just click on them, since there are so many I left them smaller. I use the dip in method with simple tools from Grummer  the link will take you to what I bought.  used to use old towels to soak up the water but I bought their thick papers for this, for the size of paper I am making and love them better-can be used over and over just dry them out. here  
   Making paper from recyled papers is really fun to do and makes nice paper to make cards with-they are the perfect size when folded in half-and you can purchase envelopes for them at Wal Mart-or make them which I have not attempted as of yet.   

I like to use allot of botanicals in my papers and I also like textures-so I don't blend my pulp down all the way-so some of the tissue papers especially shows up in the paper, and sometimes words will show up too. I like seed catalogs for the words.

Update January 30th
     The papers are now dry, and have been under a heavy book for a couple days to flatten them out more. Very pleased that they held the colors-each piece is different. I will be making these into cards and mailing them out