Making wildflower seeded paper

I attended an online class hosted by Frederick Book Arts Center "Gardener's Blizzard Book".  The book artist Catherine Cross Tsintzos presented information on book binding and paper making techniques to create a Gardener's Blizzard Book with handmade and hand dyed paper.

The Blizzard book is a complicated folding of a long strip of paper to create a series of pockets that can act as a book spine to hold additional pages.  This book design was developed by Hedi Kyle.  I found a wonderful blog that discusses the book form and as well as a video that shows how to do do the folds very clearly.  I am not going to be using the Blizzard book I made to hold my seed pages (I have a different use for them).  However, this is a very cool book design and I will be using it in other projects.  

This is my first attempt at making paper.  I used a food processor to convert torn paper into wet pulp.  I transferred the pulp to a water filled VAT (really just a big shallow pan).  I sprinkled dried wildflower seeds I had collected last fall on top of the water.

I carefully lowered my small deckle box into the vat, and slowly raised it to the surface while gently shaking it to distribute the pulp and seeds evenly. 

After pressing most of the water out of the pulp, I opened the deckle box and transferred the wet pulpy seed paper to a glass sheet to dry.  When the paper was dry I carefully pealed it off of the glass pane.  

Take aways from my first try at paper making:

• Add more pulp to the VAT - or the paper will be very thin
• The glass has to be VERY clean - or the paper will stick 
• It would be nice to have some color - dye or dried flower petals
• It is not as messy as it looks and it is lots of fun

Final note.  I used up the left over pulp and seeds in the vat by making a few small seed bombs. 

Revisiting rusting (part 2)

In the online FBAC class "Traces of Beauty: Rust Prints", Lauren G. Koch presented information on rusting techniques for both paper and fabrics.  I have never tried rusting fabric, but was interested in trying.  Below are the steps and results.

Items used:

• Water
• Salt
• Vinegar
• Spray bottle with a mix of vinegar and water (~70/30)
• Newspaper
• Bricks
• Rusty bits (cut metal, nails, barbed wire etc)

I soaked a piece of 100% cotton cloth in warm salt water overnight.  I laid the went piece of cloth out flat.  A variety of rusty metal bits were placed on the top half of the cloth, and sprayed with the vinegar/water mixture.  The lower half of the cloth was folded over the top half (covering the rusty metal bits).  Additional rusty metal bits were placed on the left side of the folded cloth, and sprayed with the vinegar/water mixture.  The right side of the folded cloth was then carefully folded over the left side (covering the rusty metal bits).  On top of the folded cloth and rusty metal bits I added some sheets of folded newspaper and a big brick.  I checked on the folded cloth a few times during the afternoon, re-wet the cloth if it was dry.  I left the folded cloth stack to continue to rust overnight.

The next afternoon I carefully unfolded the cloth, and removed the rusty metal bits.  I rinsed the cloth in water to remove any vinegar residue.  The results are not as striking as my rusty paper experiment, but I am still happy with the results.