I’ve been taking advantage of the recent warm weather to get some pulp prepared ready for some papermaking during the summer. I’ve been storing offcuts, spoils and spares of a wide range of papers and cards that I have used during the last year – mainly cartridge/watercolour stuff as this has good fibres for repulping, but also junk mail, bits of packaging and packing too, along with a few egg boxes for good measure.
I spent a leisurely afternoon in the garden, sat in a deckchair under a wide parasol tearing everything into little bits and dropping them into buckets of water. There may have been a cold drink or two but not from the buckets!
These were left to soak overnight before pulverising in a blender. If you’re interested in the process, I covered it here in some detail back in 2012.
I had quite a lot of blue scrap too and decided to make a separate batch – I may add this to the white during the making process, but I thought I would like to see how dark/rich the blue was before I did:
I had got a decent amount of grey and black scrap too and made a third batch – I have got plans for this but want to darken it up a bit more.
All this is leading up to some new prints which will be for sale in my Etsy shop later in the year. Watch this space.