Do you know what this is? It’s my junk mail!
I got my kids a ‘recycling’ kit for Christmas. It has a hand-crank blender, mould, deckles, cleaning cloths, and a press.
They LOVE it.
First, they tear up all of my paper recycling and soak it in warm water for a few hours.
Then they blend it up and make paper, which usually takes 24 hours to dry, but with my handy-dandy 5$ dehydrator, it only takes an hour.
Then, they color it and hang it on the fridge.
How green is THAT!
But, wait, it gets better. All of the unused soaked paper (of which there is tons cause they really dig the tearing/soaking/stirring part) gets dumped straight on my compost pile–no prep needed. Sweet!!!
I don’t know how my Wally World Bill Nye version compares to anything else on the market, but I like it just fine. However, if you’re handy like TL, I’m SURE homemade papermaking tools are FAR superior.
Ivory
P.S. As you can imagine, this craft is a bit sloshy, but since it’s only water and paper fibers, it cleans up in a second. Nothing to stain or get sticky or ruin clothes. One wipe with a wet sponge and waa-laa!
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I love this idea. Am thinking might be a perfect weekend activity to help my little craft man busy this week. He is recovering from having his tonsils out Friday and is about to go nuts having to stay in and not be bouncing off the walls active (his normal state, lol.) This would give him lots of messy ooey gooey fun to make and then create art on. Thanks for another great idea. I just love your blog!!! So many awesome ideas and such on it.