Paper
First - I have a ticker over there —-> that shows the funds Grace has raised for the aquarium we’re visting in August. $52 so far!
Second - You’ll see the Florida ticker because we finally got our tix today (and $300 cheaper than planned!)
We made paper today and it turned out really neat. The first thing you have to do to make paper is…use paper. I know it sounds ironic, but it is a great way to recycle paper you don’t want. We used newspaper, brown paper, the inside of a packing envelope and some leaves and bark. You could use phone books, computer paper, mail, etc. First you tear up the paper into bits, you could just leave them long too (they will get mashed up eventually.)
Put the torn bits into a container and fill with water, not too much water though. Then let it sit, we let our newspaper soup stew for about an hour getting nice and wet.
Next, if you have a blender, put the bits and water in it and mash it up on low speed and then pour it back into the container.
We just sat there and tore them up by hand. Keep at it until the paper is just tiny bits floating around, now give a good stir.
Now get a screen (I used a plastic cross stitch frame from Michaels) and dip it in the water, get paper all over the frame and make sure it’s even.
Then put it on the table and press the extra water out with a sponge.
You can leave it to dry like that or put a piece of felt on top, flip it and then let it dry.
We found that it was easier to use the smaller pieces of plastic than bigger ones, so we had 1 heart shape and 8 small squares. As the paper was drying we sprayed it with starch (so that if you write on it the ink won’t just go through the fibers.) We let the papers dry while we went to lunch and they turned out pretty good. They are kind of brittle and more like art paper than note paper. You can still see some of the words from the newspaper, but it still looks cool.
Look who had a good time at the ice cream social the other night…..
Tonight it’s back to church for the end of VBS and hot dogs, yum!