Yesterday we made paper, I believe this counts as proper recycling. I thought it might yield some really good action photos but although the process is relatively simple it is quite involved and a bit fiddly, especially for four year olds, so I had wet hands for most of the time and couldn't make much use of the camera.
First we shredded up all the written and drawn on paper that we didn't want from previous weeks camp and put it into a blender with some water. This resulted in a greyish pulp that Jacob described as 'like sick', I thought it had a really odd texture, sort of icky but pleasantly silky at the same time.
Then we slid a frame (picture frame with mosquito screen stretched across it) underneath the pulp and shook it about until it was evenly covered. Next, we pulled it out and let it drain off for a few seconds, covered it with a piece of felt and pressed some of the moisture out with a flat hand.
Then flipped it over and pushed as much water out as we could with a sponge.
Finally we peeled the wet paper off the frame and put it out in the sun to dry.
Our first attempt was plain, then we added some bits of tissue paper, glitter and food colour to the pulp to see what effects we could create.
This was something I've been wanting to try for a while, I meant to do it last year but never got around to it. Once you've got all the bits and pieces together (mosquito screen might be difficult in the UK) it's pretty simple, the tricky bit is getting your pulp fine and thin enough to make paper, most of ours is more like cardboard but I think we'll make use of it somehow, I imagine that it might feature in a number of greetings cards over the next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment