Intro

Now that I have retired, I had hoped to have time to pursue two of the hobbies that I’ve dabbled in through my life, namely photography and electronics, but one of the down-sides of getting older is failing eyesight, which is frustrating my efforts in both - so I’m starting a new hobby - paper making… and I want to share the experience of learning this new interest with you.

I’m starting out relatively cheaply. The only major expense I can see coming up is the purchase of a blender, and I will be buying the cheapest I can get hold of in the January sales, until I know if this is going to be a longer term hobby, or a five minute wonder. The other things I’ve bought so far are a large plastic storage tub to use a) as storage for all my paper making bits and b) to actually make the paper in, and a kitchen sieve to drain my pulp (got done there… was just wandering through IKEA and saw one that appeared to be priced at $7, but I got charged $12 at the checkout… my wife very helpfully later pointed out I could have got one for $5.50 at Kmart 😖 ) I’ll also need to get myself a sponge - but should be able to pick up something cheap at the supermarket, and cut up some old sheets to lay the papers onto. Down the line, I might build myself a simple press (woodworking is also one of my hobbies, that so far has survived the decline of my eyesight).

Don’t worry if you don’t know why I’m gathering all these things… during the next few posts, I will expand on the items I’m mentioning here, to explain their purpose, and alternative options - where I know of them. For those of you who want to explore video tutorials on paper making rather than having to read a tedious wordy blog,  there are plenty out there on YouTube (I’ve probably watched most of them too). I thought of adding to their ranks myself, but am a) camera-shy, b) lacking in the extrovert gene, c) very dull to listen to, and d) can’t be bothered with the hassle of video equipment, lighting, and constantly having to record more and more content to keep ‘the algorithm’ satiated. So, my story is going to use the written word, and a handful of photos - most likely very automatically exposed smartphone pictures, rather than taken with my actual camera…😉 

Moving on…

In the spirit of ‘cheap’, I’ve used some old picture frames and some fly screen mesh, to make mould and deckles in a couple of sizes, and even had a go at building myself a stopgap blender of sorts (it didn’t work very well, but I’ll tell you about that probably in the next post).

The other principle I want to stick to (though it is probably driven by my desire to reduce financial outlay, or in other words, ‘being cheap’!) is to use recycled paper as my source material, rather than using clean ‘virgin’ starter paper, and my aim is to experiment with all different kinds of paper, such as the weekly freebie community newspapers, advertising flyers, note paper, envelopes, packaging, and so on.  When you stop to think about it, there are a lot paper based products that pass through our hands each day, and just a week of saving has already netted me enough of a stash to get me started.  With Christmas just around the corner, I’m already thinking about salvaging used wrapping paper and envelopes, as well as the boxes and packaging that presents come in, that nobody wants to keep (bonus win here is that our recycling bin won’t be stuffed full of the entire family’s rubbish on Boxing Day! It’ll all be in my garage instead 🤣)

I have a few ideas on how to use the handmade recycled paper, assuming it comes out ok, but let’s get a few experimental sheets done first, before I start revealing my grand plans 😁).

One other thing I should warn you about, in case you haven’t already figured it out, is that I don’t take myself, or life, too seriously… if there’s fun to be had, or a joke to be made (likely at my own expense), then that’ll happen. This is not going to be a serious compilation of instructional material, it’s going to be fun - I hope 😉, so please join me on the journey, and enjoy our time together.