Make your own recycled paper

Making recycled paper is actually something you can do at home. You can buy a kit, or just follow the instructions here. Basically, you shred pieces of paper, put them in the blender with water to reduce them to pulp, stretch it across a screen and flatten it to make it as thin as possible (adding any decoration such as leaves to it), then dry it on felt and leave it out in the sun (or you can bake it in the oven for a few minutes, or use a hair dryer) to dry completely.

The finished product will be somewhat coarse and thick with uneven edges, but you can definitely write on it or use it for scrapbooking. Once you get good at this, it’ll look a lot like those fancy “natural” papers they sell at stores for quite a few dollars. This is a great way to make use of old junk mail or magazines and have something pretty for thank you notes, homemade birthday cards, or a journal.

It’s also a way to recycle your shredding – after shredding, paper is ready for the blender.

As you experiment, you’ll find that glossy papers and more pulply papers yield different textures. Color is somewhat difficult to predict, as the dyes in the original pages stay in, but it’s hard to guess how one dye will affect the other. This is part of the fun, though. Every piece you make will be pretty.

This is definitely a great project for kids. Young kids may need help with the blender, but pre-teens and up will be able to do this by themselves.

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Posted in Do It Yourself on March 10, 2008