How to Make Paper

This is a great project for kids – almost easy enough to do themselves (if they’re a bit older). My friend, our kids, and I did this and they LOVED it. We used a blender, to mash the paper, not our hands, but the results are the same. In addition we added stuff like:

• Dried flowers – both chopped up in the mix, and we tried pressing some into the wet paper too. Both worked.
• Herbs – both dried and ground for color, and some whole dried for looks.
• Essential oil (a few drops)
• And in one crazy moment dried chili peppers. (Hey, it was New Mexico, they add chili peppers to everything). Actually our chili paper came out looking a bit like icky orange gray – I don’t know that I’d recommend it.

You can experiment. Our best paper happened when we made mixes of recycled colored art paper of the kids, and white paper from old bills. If you use newspaper, it will come out a tad gray, however, if you add some red and blue used construction paper you’ll get a nice lavender. Also, you can use any size frame you like. If you don’t have a frame set-up, another option is to simply press the wet paper mix into a flat (or even curved) strainer – you know the type you set on top of spaghetti sauce. It will work (promise).

Now gather the kids and have fun. See what cool kinds of paper you can come up with.