Making handmade paper

Making handmade paper professionally is not easy. It took me about a year to perfect the recipe and another year to get the handmade paper flat and the colors stable. But it shouldn't stop you from making paper at home. Ot is a lot of fun! If you don't want to go thru that trouble simply order your paper here.

Make pulp for handmade paper

To start making handmade paper. You need pulp. For your home project you can use old paper. Cut the pieces really small or put the paper in the shredder. Put this together with water in a blender and blend it until its pulp. Use about 1 part paper and two parts water. If you are using thick paper leave the pulp out in the water overnight. If you like you can add some paint to color the paper. Check out all our colors of handmade paper here.

Mould and Deckle for paper making

One thing you need is to make a mould and deckle to scoop the pulp into a paper sheet. The mesurements of the mould are the size the paper is going to be. If you start it is most easy to use a classic picture frame. Take out the glass or plastic and replace this with horgas. when you scoop, the water runs thru the gas and the pulp will stay on top of it. Check out all our sizes here.

Scoop away

Now you are ready to start making the handmade paper. Make a nice bath of water and add some pulp to this. Try a few times how much you need to get to the right thickness of your liking. Scoop with your mould and wait until the water dropped true the gas. Then press the paper sheet upside down on a cloth or towel. You can then put another on top and press a paper sheet on it again. Repeat until you finish all your pulp. Check out a video of me scooping on the bottom of this page.

Dry the handmade paper

Now hang all the cloth to dry, this will take up to two or even three days. When dry you can 'rip' the handmade paper of the cloth. To make it flat you can iron the paper or leave it in beween books for a while.

Good luck!