When Work Gets In The Way

It's the weekend, my precious time to create journals and make handmade paper. Unfortunately, this weekend, I had to drive up the mountain to work. We're having an inspection this week and I had to prepare. The good news is that last weekend I made 60 sheets of handmade paper that I haven't yet posted for you to see.

Instead of making 60 sheets of one color, I made small batches of several different colors. We had some really nice, heavy black napkins left over from an event, so I brought six home and blended them into the white paper pulp. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

The heavier napkin gave a softer feel to the paper, once it was completely dried. I also had some very bright yellow cocktail napkins so the next batch consisted of 60% napkins and 40% paper pulp. Normally, I've only used napkins to add color, but I want my paper to have more fiber-texture, so I figured the addition of  additional napkins might give the paper a stronger feel. The following sheets were pulled so the sheets would be almost a card stock feel. They air dried for three days on my kitchen table. Needless to say, we ate dinner in the living room.

Once the sheets air dry at least 24 hours, I normally use a hot iron and press out the extra moisture. I read in a paper making book that if you force-dry your paper it will dry uneven. So, to avoid some of the unevenness that I've experienced in the past, I ironed the sheets until it was 80% dry. Then I stacked the sheets, placing a sheet of cotton in between each color and piled a heavy load of books on top, to keep the paper flat, while it finished drying.

Since work took my arts and craft weekend away from me, the paper is still under the pile of books. The sheets that were drying on the kitchen table are waiting for me, as well.

I'm always looking for new ideas and new procedures. A quick visit to Amazon.com resulted in the purchase of three new reference books. In addition to making the 60 sheets of paper, I also made an accordion book.

This is actually the second accordion book I made. The first one had a few measurement challenges. Imagine that!

I used brown paper for the accordion portion. Using acrylic paint, I painted each section a different style.

Using a template made it remarkably easy to place the holes for the sewing step.

The sewing step started by entering from the outside. It's a three step stitch. The final stitch (above) was the hardest stitch in finding the hole. I love the accordion book, but holding all the pages in my hand, while stitching seems awkward.

Each row is tied off separately.

The final book has seven signatures with over 100 writing surfaces.



 Work is never ending, yet my time making paper and journals is never work at all.