DIY Recycled Paper

So, being an artist it’s easy to get into bad habits of wasting. Whether it be using and throwing away plastic cups, wasting paint/resin or, NOT RECYCLING YOUR SCRAP PAPER! You don’t even have to be an artist to waste paper- majority of households do it on the daily without even noticing.

Here’s a few facts from https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Paper-Waste-Facts

• Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste

• 50% of the waste of businesses is composed of paper

• When paper rots, it emits methane gas which is 25x more toxic than CO2

So, if you’re looking for one more way to help our Earth & maybe save a few $$, this is how to do it! ⬇️

1. Keep an extra bin or basket in your home to collect scrap paper

2. Once you’ve saved a full few handfuls of scrap paper, transfer to a large bowl or a bucket which you can add a small amount of water to and let the paper soak for 10 mins

3. When the paper has become soft enough to tear easily, rip all of it into small pieces and add more water until the pulp/paper is covered (if the scrap paper used had inks or colours in it - it will affect the colour of your pulp)

4. Let soak for a couple of hours

5. After a soaking, your wet torn paper should have a pulp consistency and if not, you may want to go through and break it up a bit more

For the next step I use a cooling rack, towel & suitcase.

6.Place the towel flat over the drying rack (or any flat surface really) and use your hands to grab and spread the pulp as flat and even as you can- over your towel surface.

7. Pick out any pieces of paper that are sticking out that hadn’t turned to pulp (this is not that important, leaving the tiny bits in there gives your paper more personality!)

8. Next, lay the other side of the towel over the flattened pulp and place something heavy and flat on top of it to condense your pulp.

9. Leave for an hour then remove the heavy object & towel and place in the sun for 2 days to dry (I cheated after a couple hrs in the sun and finished the drying using my heat gun)

Once fully dry, there ya have it! Your hand made recycled paper 📝

Because I spread my pulp really thick before the drying process, my paper actually turned out to be more like cardboard. And as you can see, I left in the tiny pieces of paper that hadn’t turned to pulp... I love the look of it!

So what you do with your recycled paper after this point - is completely up to your imagination!

For mine, I’ve chosen to cut my cardboard into rectangle pieces to use as hand written ‘ThankYou’ notes for customer orders 🖤

Visit my Instagram page @chelseavenzart to see my finished Hand Made Pages (embellished with my metallic watercolours).