by Karen Mendelow
Illustrations by Stephanie Syjuco

apermaking is a fun project to do outside with friends on a sunny day, but it's easily done inside as well. It will take about two hours for the basic papermaking process, and you'll end up with around fifteen lovely sheets that you can use for cards, picture frames, or whatever your imagination suggests.

he ingredients for creating beautiful handmade paper are close at hand - just go mining in your paper recycling bin. You begin by pulverizing the waste paper. Then, after a few short steps, the fibers rejoin before your eyes to create new paper.

You'll be making 100 percent post-consumer content paper, which means that all your material has been used before - and that's really quite an achievement. Public demand for recycled paper has encouraged paper companies to retool their mills so that they can process paper that we recycle from our homes and offices. But a large percentage of recycled paper is made from pre-consumer material - misprints and overruns from printers, for example. Although 100 percent post-consumer content paper is available, most commercially made printing or writing grade recycled paper contains only 10 percent to 30 percent post-consumer waste.

While there are environmental costs in making recycled paper, the process has less of an ecological impact than that of making paper from raw materials. As you make your own paper, you'll observe the water and energy required to reprocess paper fiber. In commercial manufacturing, producing printing grade recycled paper can save as much as half the energy that's needed in making paper from wood pulp, and there's a savings of water as well. As you admire each beautiful and unique piece of handmade paper you've created, you will gain a first-hand understanding of the papermaking process and an appreciation of the importance of paper recycling and paper conservation.

1.

Take your two picture frames and remove the glass and backing from both. (Or make your own frames out of wood.) To make the mold, stretch the screen tightly over the surface of one of the frames, and attach the screen to the back of the frame with a staple gun or tacks. The second frame will be used as the deckle, which makes the sheet of paper the desired size.

2.

The evening before you plan to make paper, sort the paper in your recycling bin by type. Used white photocopy paper is the best material to start with for the pulp base; avoid newsprint and glossy paper. Rip the copy paper into small pieces, roughly an inch square. Soak the pieces overnight in a bucket of water. Rip assorted sheets of colored paper into small pieces, and soak them separately. A good ratio to begin with is four times as much white paper as colored paper. Colored photocopy paper and uncoated gift-wrap paper are good choices, but glossy, brightly colored magazines can be used in small amounts for accents.