The 5th grade art students at Briarwood school are terrific paper makers! Mrs. Baker, Briarwood's art teacher, invited me to demonstrate the process and to help her classes make handmade paper this week. We recycled paper by shredding it and making it into a pulp.
Then mixed it with lots of water and interesting additives such as chopped yarns and threads, colored papers, wrapping paper, dried flowers and leaves, cut-up photos, lots of glitter- just about anything you can cut up into little pieces and toss into the pulp bucket.
Once the water has drained through the mesh of the paper mold, the newly formed sheet of paper is ready to be transfered to a drying felt and pressed.
Students kept pleasing color and texture combinations in mind as they put together the additives for their paper. They will be using it in another project later this spring.
Here's a nice example of a blue monochromatic piece using small squares of blue paper and snippets of blue yarn.
