Seed Paper

In the middle of this paper making project, the phone rang. It was my great-aunt. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Making paper" was my reply. There was a pause at the other end of the line. "I'm crazy...I know" I commented, and we both laughed.

The closeup photo of blue-grey paper shows the little specks of seeds, parsley seeds, that I've put in the paper.

Assuming that the paper dries well (and the seeds don't sprout prematurely), I'll use it for thank you notes for the Master Gardeners' Garden Show that just finished.





Here are shots of the tools and results from my first foray into papermaking:
(tutorial from Gracious Rain)

I filled the blender ~2/3 full with paper from my shredder basket, added a bit (~1/4 C.) of blue lint from my drier, and filled the blender with water.

I poured the resulting oatmeal-like slurry into a rectangular plastic tub and used the plastic needlepoint canvas as a screen to create the paper. One screen was used to collect the pulp; the other was placed on top to help squeeze out some of the water.

The wet paper was laid on a hand towel, the canvas screen removed, and was allowed to dry. Technically, it is still drying. Maybe by bedtime I can take flip the papers over to allow the bottom side to dry better...maybe I can get them off the wet towel too.