Tuesday's Tutorial #10

Tuesday's Tutorial #10

Molded Handmade Paper

Supplies List:

• 
  Blender
  
  
• 
  Water
  
  
• 
  Shredded paper scraps, newspaper, unprinted computer paper
  
  
• 
  Liquid starch (optional)
  
  
• 
  Bathroom Tissue (from now on referred to as Artist Paper or AP)
  
  
• 
  Towels plus one piece woven fabric or flannel receiving blanket
  
  
• 
  Some sort of mold: chocolate mold, cookie mold, soap mold
  

Step One:



Start by adding paper shreds to the blender, pack in loosely then cover with water.



Blend until pieces are just pulp, or less if you want chunks of color. News paper will turn the paper gray, I used a bunch of colors and it came out sort of purplish, use only white paper if you want to end up with a white item to color later.



Pulp should be loose and watery to fit into detailed molds.





Step Two:



Using a few drops of water on your finger tips, place one or more sheets of Artist Paper on top of the mold. I only used one as it covered the entire mold that I was using. When I used the whole pan to make all of the images I used 2 layers to cover the whole thing.











Step Three:



Scoop up enough pulp to cover your fingertips and place on top of the AP in the mold. Continue scooping this amount until the image in your mold is covered in about 1/4" thick of pulp. There should be water seeping out of the pulp at this point.







Step Four:



Place woven fabric piece or flannel blanket on top of pulp in the mold. If using a towel place it on top of the fabric, this is so the loops of the towel don't get stuck in the pulp, if using the flannel, fold several times before placing on top. Put a generous amount of pressure on the blanket or towel, as they become soaked add others on top. Then slowly peel off and use a dry towel to finish soaking out as much water as you can.







The pulp should be as flat a paper and may be indented, if you would like it to be thicker, repeat from step 3 until desired thickness.



















Step Five:



Carefully pull away any excess paper around the edges of the image, be careful not to tear the image, or you can wait till it is dry and cut it off with scissors.





Step Six:



Carefully remove paper from the mold and leave out to dry or put them in a low temp oven, about 200 degrees for about 15 min. Mine came out a little curled up from the oven. Don't know if would have been different air drying, I'm too impatient, lol.





Here is my finished project, the images dried white and I rubbed them with Club Scrap hybrid ink on a sponge brush.



Trimmed the edges, glued to a 3x3 square and used toothpicks as drum sticks. These are for a 12 days of Christmas swap :)