If you are at all crafty, you might enjoy selling paper that you make yourself by hand. This can be a very rewarding business and you’ll find that a lot of people love the idea of buying paper made from recycled items. You can even take it a step further and make crafts from your handmade paper and sell those for an even larger profit, which we will discuss in Part Three of this series.

Handmade paper is relatively easy to make, in fact, you’ve probably done it a time or two yourself. I know we used to stick newspaper and water in a blender when I was a kid and then spread it over a screen to make recycled paper. The techniques have advanced a bit since then, and you can turn out some very lovely papers without too much work.

There is absolutely no reason to stick with old newspapers when you are making your own paper. Just about any fiber can be used. I have personally seen handmade paper made from banana leaves, coconut husks and even grass! You might want to start with something slightly more conventional, though, like recycled paper bags, greeting cards, and the like. This is also a great use for all those botched print jobs that your daughter turned out trying to get just the right look for her English essay!

To begin your papermaking, you will need a window screen or two (preferably still in the window frame, to hold it taut), a blender, paper products and a large basin or sink that will hold the entire window frame. Alternatively, you could stretch the window screen yourself and tack it into a frame according to the size of paper you want to make. A sponge and some pieces of felt that are slightly larger than your screen. White is best, since other colors tend to leave colored fibers on the paper.

Blend torn bits of your recycled paper along with the same amount of water. In other words, a cup of paper to a cup of water. When you finish, there should be no extra bits of paper, everything should be nice and smooth. Add this mixture to your basin and add even more water (about three cups to every cup of pulp). The ration of water to pulp really depends on how thick you want the finished product to be. The thicker the mixture in the tub, the thicker the paper. I wouldn’t recommend going too thin for your first attempt, since it can be tricky to manipulate afterwards.

Now, put your paper frame into the tub and submerge it completely before lifting it up. You can shake it around a bit to get the paper smoothed out, then let the excess water drain out. Once the paper is semi-dry, lay the frame paper side down onto a square of felt and use a sponge to press out the water from the back. Gently lift the frame. The paper sheet should stay on the fabric. If not, you might need to press out more water first.

Finally, you will want to let the paper dry on the felt. The amount of time this will take depends entirely on how thick the paper is. Once it has dried, you can peel it off the fabric.

This is a very long post, but it is going to be just a tad longer. If you want to spice things up, here are a few ideas:

- Add a teaspoon or two of liquid starch to the pulp before filtering it if you want your paper to be used for writing.

- Adding a drop or two of food coloring is a good way to add a subtle tint to your paper.

- Try adding different ingredients for interest, after the blending process. Leaves, bits of thread or yarn, scraps of foil and colored tissue paper are all good additions to homemade paper.

- Experiment with different fibers as mentioned above. Try dried leaves, grass clippings or shredded jeans!

If all this seems a little too much for you, you could buy a Papermaking Kit and Videoand have everything you need right off the bat, along with instructions. Join me next time for Part Two, where we will learn how create more complex and salable handmade papers.

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