How To Make Handmade Paper With Recycled Paper In Our Kitchens! - Paper Making w/ Robyn McClendon

So welcome to my adjunct studio here in my kitchen. It's a great place to make paper. We all know we have a kitchen island or a kitchen table. You have the water source right here. The floors are normally cool for getting a little bit of water spilled on them and generally you have access to outside if you want to take the papers outside to let them dry or whatever. So it's really a good place to get started. Let's talk about what we're going to need. We're going to need a blender. This blender is just an inexpensive, you know, $20, $29 blender or something. We have the links in the descriptions below. But if you find one at the thrift store, what have you, try it before you, you know, you take it out. But generally those are good to use as well. So you need your blender. You need your molds. The links for all of these products are below the video. This one is one from Amazon. It's student grade molds. There are about five of them for around, I think it was $26, $24 or something like that. Really good price on them. So I'd recommend these to start with. And the sizes go all the way up to, I guess this is like a nine by 12. So we'll really be able to do a lot with this one set. You need a dish pan, just a good old dollar store dish pan will work nicely. The main thing is just when you get your molds, you can check the size pan that you need, but anything that will hold water that's, you know, that's fairly shallow is great. Also, we'll be talking as we go along about the different molds, but these are a few of the more professional grade molds that we have here. And this one is actually for Japanese papermaking. And we will eventually get to playing with these type of molds. It has what we call the decal or the frame, and then the screen is removable. It's bamboo screening. And so it's Eastern papermaking is completely different than the Western, but we're going to accomplish some of the Western papermaking, I mean, Eastern papermaking on our Western molds. And we'll talk about how it's going to happen. And then this is also a professional grade mold and decal. So generally your papermaking molds come as a two part, you have a mold and a decal. We're going to start off by just working with the mold. It's going to be a lot easier to get going, but I want you to always know what the whole process is, because, you know, I'm good for showing you good ways to accomplish it, but I also like you to be aware of what maybe it is traditionally or where you can expand. So you'll notice that we're going to be working with just the mold part of the frame, not the top part, the decal. So we'll get to more of that, but I wanted to show you some of my molds that so you have an idea of what it all looks like. So a mold like this is going to run you about $300 for this one. And that's an inexpensive one because they can actually be $1,200, $1,500 for your really high end molds. But this one works nicely. And then with your Asian molds, they run anywhere from like $90 to $130, $140. So just so you have an idea of the difference in cost, but we're going to be able to make some incredible paper with our Amazon 5 for under $30. We'll need paper. I'm going to start off using the Daiso calligraphy paper. Most of you already have this. The links to get are below for this. And I'm going to talk about why we start making the paper. But this is great to accomplish the type of paper that we want. We're going to be using the blender, but we don't want it to look like blender paper. We're going to be making a studio grade paper, but using our blender. So they're sort of thick paper towel kind of papers. I'm sure you've seen. They're fun. They're nice, but we're going to go with these. And what we're using them in our collages, our fine art, our projects. We want a slightly better quality paper. And then we also have Pellon. This is the non-fusible interfacing. And I have links for this as well. This is what we're going to be using to what we call couche or couche our paper onto a substrate. And, you know, couche or couche is the French word for couch, which means to lay down. So we're going to be laying down on this fiber. And then we're going to have a towel. So this all makes sense once we get going. But those are the main and water, plenty of water. But those are the main things that we need to begin. So let's go ahead down to the table and get started in this step-by-step process. We need to begin first with cutting our Pellon down. And what we want to do is we want to cut it to the size of our mold with a little extra. So what I kind of do is I sort of look and figure out. This is about a, I think I got like a yard of Pellon. So the best thing to do is once you kind of get the mold that you know you want to use, we'll lay it down and you're like, this is good. So I'm going to fold this in half. And this will give me several sheets to work with. So I think I'm going to keep it long and I'm going to tell you why as we get to going. So I'm just going to go ahead and cut this down. And we'll be going, we'll be using this Pellon. So if you get a good deal on it, I think I found it for $3.99 a yard, which is way more than what it used to be. But look for this stuff also in the Goodwills, you know, any place that you can find it. If it's on sale, grab it. Because we're going to use a lot of it moving forward. I'm going to keep it into, I could have cut this down again and end up getting eight, but I want to keep it long because we can also join paper together to create longer paper. So this is a good place to start. So I'm going to cut it down into these four sections. Our tile, fold it up around the size of your mold. This creates a nice spongy surface for us to begin to lay our papers down on. One of the things that I like to do to get started is paper releases with water. So let's just go ahead and begin to soak this tile a bit. Just right here in the middle, because the more water that's there, the easier it's going to be for us to begin to just need one down at a time. See, that's good. It's coming through. And as we go, it's just going to naturally have more water, but it's always nice just to get a surface going. So that's ready. We'll push that to the side. And now we'll come to our blender. What we're going to use is a couple of different papers. So we can use this Japanese calligraphy paper, you know, the Daiso paper that you guys know and love. This is in the natural color. So I'm going to take two sheets and we're just going to rip them up. I've already started tearing some of them. So we want to tear them down into smaller pieces that should look pretty much like these pieces here. I know it's like we're tearing paper to make paper, but the paper we want to make is going to be a lot more natural. It's going to have a lot more texture to it. Plus, we want to start putting things in our paper. So the reason why I'm using this calligraphy paper, because it's already a thin paper. It's already made with, you know, thin Japanese fiber. And this is how we're going to kind of do Japanese paper process by getting a nice thinner paper by using a paper that's already created from those fibers. So it's normally like an inch by inch. There's no real rule here. You know, you don't have to be uber precise. So this will be a total of four sheets. When I'm done, any of the thin, beautiful Asian papers are perfect for this. The main thing is we're going to be adding our own, what is called inclusions. So the things that we put in the paper, it'll make it look like there's strings and fibers, other type of, you know, flex, things like that will be what we add. So today what we're going to do is I'm going to get you started on just the basic paper making process. And just for us to get the basic paper. From this, we'll begin to add to it and make all those other, what I'm calling sort of, you know, blick paper dupes from this one process. Also, another paper would be sort of this Asian calligraphy paper. This is made on an Asian laid mold. But it's very, very thin. And this stuff is going to be really good for us to use back in the paper making process. So if you hear any barking, it's just, you know, Akilah's outside. So that's what dogs do here in the kitchen. So it shouldn't be too much. So let's go ahead and fill our blender. I'm going to fill it up to like the one, I guess this is the one liter line. So maybe two thirds of it is full. I don't know if you can sort of see. It's kind of hard because I'm doing overhead. So we're going to start at about one liter. And to that, I'm just going to add a handful of fiber. It's always nice to add some, get started, break it down and then add more until we get a nice consistency. So let's go ahead and get it going. It's going to be a little noisy. It's going to break down fast because this paper is already so thin. You know, it's not a really dense paper. So that part's good. So in the traditional Japanese paper process, you're using three fibers. It's either gampi, mitsumatsu or kozo. And they're actually fibers that are stripped from the limb of bushes. So the bushes are not killed. You know, they don't chop the bush down. They strip it of the branches during the spring seasons when they prune the bushes. And then that is used to make the fiber. Now, it's a very long fiber. They're very long fibers. So you have to actually cook it in a caustic solution, like a soda ash, to break those fibers down. And you cook them for hours. Sometimes it's on a slow cook for 24 more hours. And that starts making the fibers mushy. And then you have to use a mallet to pound and pound those fibers out. And as you're pounding them out, they're getting shorter and shorter and softer and softer. That's why when you see Asian paper, a lot of times you see the long fibers in them. Because that fiber that you may see now that's maybe an inch was, you know, a yard. When it got started, when we first started the cooking process. So it's a very laborious process to make the fiber for Asian papers. It's fun when you do it. But it does take days and days just to prepare the fiber to turn into paper. So the advantages of us taking and reusing the fibers, we cut out that whole step of preparing, you know, days and days of the fiber. So while we're talking about the Eastern papermaking, let's talk a little bit about Western fibers. So we talked about how the Eastern are your Mitsumatsi, Gomphy, and Kozo fibers that are very similar to our mulberry bush. And so it's harvested and it's a renewable process. Because that tree is going to keep on producing its branches, which get harvested. In the Western papermaking, you either have cotton, linen, traditionally cotton, linen, flax, which are also renewable, right? Even when you clear the flax field, you know, it gets replanted. And you're constantly in a season being able to get new flax fibers. Same thing with cotton. You have a cotton field, you know, it's renewable. You can plant it next year. You have more of the same crop. Those are shorter fibers. So the cotton bulb, you know, little bulb, if you think about it, you can look at that and see that that's a shorter fiber, maybe an inch, inch and a half, two inches compared to a meter. When you think about a branch off of a mulberry bush. Also, flax or linen, you know, it grows in a field pretty much like wheat or something. So it's a long grass. It's longer than the cotton, but it's shorter than the Kozo. Fibers. It's also softer. So you do still cook linen and flax fibers in a caustic solution. So soda ash, you cook it. You don't have to cook it quite as long as the Kozo, Gonfio, Mitsumatsu. And also you do still beat it, but you don't have to beat it as long. But it's a process very similar to Japanese papermaking to use those fibers. But then again, you could take old tablecloths and linen napkins and things like that, that we inherit, that maybe have holes and stains in them, but we got them from, you know, a favorite, you know, grandmother or aunt or mother. You don't just want to throw it away. Well, that you can literally cut them up into small pieces, like we're doing with this paper, cook it a little bit. And then it's ready to go into a beater. You can't use a blender for any of these fibers. No natural fiber is going to be able to be broken down in a blender. You have to have something called a Hollander beater, which is designed for papermaking. So the workaround for us to do this in our studio is we're going to have to use fibers that have already been processed. So taking other papers and reusing those papers is going to be the best way to go about this. There are something called linters that you can purchase from professional papermaking suppliers. And we can talk about that at another point. And some of those can be broken down in the blender, but still not that good. So our best bet is for us to kind of do our little cheat sheet. And I'm going to find a lot of papers for us that we can really reuse that are going to make some really beautiful papers. And we can stick it to our blender for right now. So those are some of the differences. And yeah, so we'll keep going. Here we are with the blender. You know, we blended it. I'll just go one more time. So let's take a look at this. And I'll put my hands in here. You're going to see that we have this real pulpy kind of substance. And that's what you want. You want to see the pulp, but at the same time, you know, you're going to see that the water is going to pretty much run through your hands. And I think this is pretty good. So it's going to look a little lumpy because it's really concentrated right now. But it's going to be ready for us to put into our pan. And we'll add some more water to it. And we'll test it. So I'm going to take this whole amount. So we have about a liter of water, like we talked about, and four sheets of the pulp. I'm going to put it in here. Now, the trick is you don't want to add too much water to it too fast. A cup of water right now. And then I'm going to test it. So right now, think about the fact we have about a liter of water in here. And I just added another cup. So when you put your mold in, it's a scooping action. So you kind of want to scoop it, get it flat. I'm just going to kind of jiggle it in here because what that's doing is it's causing the fibers to kind of flatten and smooth out. You can see that. Because we don't have a frame, we won't be able to capture the water and let that happen naturally with the frame. So what you want to do is you definitely want to let the water drain out. And this is looking pretty good. It's kind of thickened some spaces and thinning others. So let's just see how it cooches here. Probably could have a little bit more water, but we're just going to take it easy. So what you want to do is you want to stand it. We already put water down there. It feels like a little bit like it's drying up a little bit. When you get started, it's water that releases the paper. So don't be afraid to have too much water. You'll get to the point that when you're making a lot of it, pretty soon the water will be running down onto the floor. You'll have so much. So what you want to do is you want to stand your paper up. Let me just kind of get some extra fibers off of the frame. And it's good to let it drain. Really let it drain well. Don't worry about feeling like you have to hurry up and put it down. And then you stand it up on its side and you do a rolling motion. So you stand it up and then you flatten it. Now you really want it to make good contact. See when I'm pushing it down, how much water is actually coming up through my frame. So I would just pour just an extra little bit amount here just to get a little bit more water going so that it's really making good contact. Don't be afraid to kind of work with it. You'll get used to what it's going to do. And then holding the left side. So I started on the right. I rolled to the left. Hold this tight and you want to snap and then your paper comes off in that process. So this is my first sheet. There's some imperfections in it and you'll find that that's going to happen as well to yours. If you get something that you don't like, you're like, oh, you know, like I want to keep on trying again. All you have to do is take it, flip it back on the surface and it'll pop right off. And you can do it again. So there's really no mistakes at this point. So let's do this. Main thing is just getting a good release. Okay, that's good because now we have a nice thin sheet too. But if yours is thicker, don't worry. What you then want to do is put a sheet over it, another piece of your Pellon and just kind of flatten it a little bit. The Pellon allows the fiber not to stick. So let's pull another one. Should have enough in here. And you definitely could do more fiber. So I did four sheets of this. You could do eight sheets, you know, like do a batch, pour it in here, do another four sheets, pour it in here. So you can top your vat up too. We're just, you know, this is the beginning, just getting started. There's so much more to go with this. But I just want you to be able to get to pulling some paper. So I think what I'm gonna do is I'm also going to do some of this paper. Let's put some of this in the blender. And once again, snap. And there we have it. Nice, beautiful sheet of paper. So go easy on yourself. Get started. Go easy. You'll just start off the side and you're just gonna play. Don't have any expectations of making the perfect sheet of paper. Of course not. Just play. If you have to keep on putting it in, putting it back in the blender again, try it again, you will definitely get it. And then you'll have some pieces that may be a little wonky, but you're like, I want to dry them anyhow, because I want to see what they're going to look like. Do that because those pieces of paper we're still going to be able to use because we'll be using these back in all of our different projects on Patreon. We're going to be doing all of the different book projects, our collages, jelly printing on YouTube. You know, of course, we're doing our mudlarkers, cards. So we're going to use these papers. So don't worry about it. And if you get frustrated, you're like, oh my God, I can't get a decent sheet. Just let dry what you already have. And when you pull it off, you're going to feel so proud of yourself because it is going to be a sheet of paper that you made and it's going to have wonderful texture to it and we'll be able to use it in our projects. So that's it for now. I'll be back once the paper is dry. So we are back to dive into our paper making. Oh my goodness. Of course, I've already done it. And so I can show you some of the papers and some of the ideas about how this whole system is working. We'll talk about the card that I created with some of those first papers. And I'm just excited. I have had a ball with this paper making. And I know you guys will also. Now, I have to say that I'm going to share as much of the process with you on the YouTube videos. You know, it's going to take practice, practice, practice. I promise you, if you practice, you're going to get it. But it's going to take practice. I've been doing paper making for over 30 years. I apprenticed with some of the best paper makers in the country and out of the country as well. I apprenticed directly under a Japanese paper maker with Japanese, Asian paper making. He was Japanese. They are a national treasure. So like they are at the top of what they do, you know. And it's funny. They really consider the paper makers a national treasure. So that's with the Eastern paper making. With the Western paper making, I apprenticed with a number of studios at the time. One of them is Pyramid Atlantic. They're still in Maryland. Just a top notch paper making facility. Elaine Koretsky and her mother, Elaine and Donna Koretsky, mother and daughter with Carriage House Papers. They're a good resource when you really go deep into paper making. Twin Rocker paper making. I mean like in the 80s, there was paper making was being revived. And there were these centers that were just popping up. Now 30 years later, 40 years, they're still thriving and selling a lot of paper making materials. Some of the top ones that you can find as well as exhibitions and things like that. So it took me a long time to really get to the place of knowing how to make paper. So I know in my videos, I'm making it look easy. It's not like one of those things like, oh, it takes practice. So just don't be hard on yourself. That's why in the videos, I'll make mistakes. I'll show you even if I didn't make a mistake. I redid it to show you how you can clear off your Pellon, how you can tweak some of the things that are going to happen to you until you get a rhythm. But the big thing is just practice, practice, practice. And even those sheets that come off a little wonky, you might have put it down in your Pellon and some of it ripped and you have like this little crazy sheet on there. Let it dry. Just let it dry because when it dries, you're going to still have paper that you're going to be proud of and that you're going to be able to work back in our inspiration cards, our Mudlarkers deck. This paper right here at the bottom I use, this was not a very good piece. It kind of got a little damaged when I was drying it, but I let it dry and I've used it and it's great. So don't criticize, suspend judgment. Those of you who follow me on Patreon, I'm putting hour, hour and a half long videos over there of the entire process. So there's lots and lots of instruction. I have a lot of hand holding and we're going to get through this process. I know not everybody can join me on Patreon. I'm actually putting the hand paper making at the $10 level, which is my lowest tier, but I'm putting it there because I want to make it as accessible as I can to our community and that's a month, but you're going to get four videos plus more. And if you can't do it, don't worry. I'm just going to give you as much over here as I possibly can show of this process and still keep the YouTube algorithms going without it being a crazy long video and all the other stuff I've got to deal with. You've heard me talk about before. So anyway, that's our process. Okay, so just have fun. I thought I would show you here. So we were doing it on our Pellon and it'll dry. So if you just let it dry completely, it'll dry stuck on here. The fiber of this Pellon and the hand paper, the fibers work beautifully together and literally you just can strip it. You just pull it right off the Pellon. This is reusable, which is why I love this stuff. You can reuse it and this one I combined, but it was just fun to show how you could strip them together and actually make larger pieces from even the smaller molds. But these are the papers that we made this week. And these are more of an Asian fiber. So you can see how nice and thin they are. I mean, like you can see this edge is really pretty thin. So we're not making that really thick blender paper. It's okay. Those techniques honestly were developed for students, for kids to be able to take in. I used to do get scholarships through this Maryland State Arts Council. And I would take it into the various public schools all around the state into the art departments and show it. I'd be there for a month and then I would show the art teachers how to do it. And then they were able to continue to do the papermaking process in their art programs moving forward. And I went to so many schools. I probably went to just about every elementary, secondary school in the state. Not really, but I went to a lot of them. Because I was the only one teaching hand papermaking in the public school systems as a resident artist. And I would get the grants through the Maryland State Arts Council. We don't really get grants anymore. But those are the days that artists got grants and they were really good grants. I mean, I really was able to live off of the grants and then the down times I'd be in my studio. So it was really good. So yeah, we're making some nice paper. You can see how nice and flat it is, but you still get that nice texture that you get with hand papermaking. And it's strong. I mean, it's a strong paper. So you're making some good paper here. Okay, so let's talk about the card. I wanna spend time talking about that a little bit at the start of this all to reiterate it. So today I made one card because a large chunk of this is showing you how to make the paper and going over all the supplies. So I got one card done today. And this was here again using, this bottom part is the handmade paper using the Daiso calligraphy paper that we put into the blender. And blender paper also, I've talked a little bit about this, it's just a very convenient tool to get this pulp broken down. But you can really only use papers that have already been created into paper in the blender. Like you can't use raw fibers in the blender. It just can't break down the fibers. You have to actually have a Hollander beater, which is a papermaking beater. That's like a five to $7,000 machine. So I'm showing you the best way to get some elegant upscale paper with a blender. Okay, so that's the fun of it all. So this, I used one of the nails that I had gotten when I was mudlarking. And I sandwiched it in. This is also the yellow, you know, dark yellow handmade paper that we made. And I sort of sandwiched the nail in there. Now it really, I'm using the white glue, but you can see it is, it's on there. This is not going anywhere. That's not lifting up. It's good. I could come back and some of the cards and use some embroidery floss and things on them, but I'm observing my 80% rule because I really want to decide exactly how I want to do all of that. So I kind of want to get it to the point and I'll probably sit down and do several cards at one time and add an embellish. And I'll show you guys that process as well. This is some more Blick paper. This is one of the Blick dupes that we'll do. And that was with the gold square. So that's coffee stained and I put that down. And this is some of the circle paper that we've been using as well. That's coffee stained. And then this is some of the Tibetan paper. I love this paper. And I just, you know, just enjoy the script of it all. So I put that down across the top and then I came back and did some here. This one reminded me of, I guess as I was doing it, so I wrote on the back setting sun. It also reminded me of The Alchemist, Paul Cahillo's book, The Alchemist. Something about this just reminded me of that. And so I put that down because I love alchemy and that's one of my favorite reads, The Alchemist. And then Arabian Nights. So I don't know. I just really got that sort of Middle Eastern vibe from this or something. You know, I love it. And I just really think it made a really elegant card. And you know, it started the storytelling with the alchemy, for sure. The idea of turning, you know, lead to gold, a nice gold square there. So I love it. So anyway, that's our video. Like I said, the ones where I'm doing papermaking, there's going to be more papermaking than actually. So I'll at least get one card done so that the videos aren't too long. And then in between we'll be doing, you know, the two cards along with whatever papers we have or, you know, the normal process. So yeah, really enjoyed this. So love to see what you all have done. Remember to join my Facebook group because over in the Facebook group, it's a private group, but you can request to come in and then that's where you can share your work. You can share the papers you're making. That way I get to see everything. And it's just a lot of fun. So remember to do that. We have the link below. And I guess that's everything. Just remember, go easy on yourself. No rights, no wrongs, no rules here. I'm going to tell you in the beginning, it's going to be tricky. It's going to, you know, just be prepared to mess up. Start again. Mess up some more. Start again. You're going to get a rhythm. At some point, you're going to figure it out. You're going to go, oh my God, there it is. And once you have, it's like riding a bike. You'll be good. But I'm not going to, you know, disillusion you think, oh, it's easy. Oh, just do this. No, it's not difficult, but it's not easy. You know, that little saying that people say. Anyway, love you guys. Until next week, have fun. I know you are going to be making a lot of paper. Can't wait to see it. And so much love from me to you. And yeah, bye-bye. See you next week. Also, if you enjoyed the video, please thumb it up. If you're new to my channel, go ahead and hit that bell. Hit all. Because you don't want to miss any of these papermaking sessions we're going to do. I'm doing the Blick Dupes, you know, we're talking about. We're taking all those expensive 10, 12, $15 papers. And for the fraction of the price, we're going to be making our own papers. We're going to be doing our decorative papers. We're going to be doing stuff on the gel plate, making decorative papers. We're going to be doing mark making, making decorative papers. And we're going to be making our papers. And all inspired to be used in our Mudlarkers deck. So, love you guys. See you next week. Bye-bye.