Tis' the Season!

December has gone by in a flurry! Although not the snowy type of flurries here; it was 80 degrees last week! Because the weather was so nice, I made paper outside for a couple days.

Right under our orange tree. That led to another project.

Picking the oranges. They are totally juicy and yummy!

 Oh, yes, the cotton and recycled box handmade papers came out yummy as well!

Cobbler's New Shoes

You know the story about the Cobbler's kids never having new shoes....well that is kinda like us. When we had the shop open to the public, we went through business cards by the bazillions. Seriously, we would order them 1000's at time--people constantly picked them up even though we are not sure what they did with them. Anyhoo, this weekend when Gary and I were in the midst of transferring 48 cases of type from a double wide cabinet to two single cabinets (talk about a marital bonding experience--ha, ha! I'll do a separate post about that and how much work it was!) we agreed that we should finally letterpress cards for us.

So when Mike popped in today, he asked how he could help us prepare for the printer's fair. I told him I needed to get some business cards done--all I had decided so far was that I wanted to use handmade paper, Packard type and we needed a background. Mike suggested this lovely old ATF ornament and I started mixing ink like a crazy gal.
My scan of the card is not doing it justice. It is printed on a lovely pale blue handmade paper with the ornament in a summer green ink and the lettering in deep blue ink. While we love photo polymer plates, we've been trying to use stuff we have in the studio. Kinda like cooking with stuff in your cupboard! Gary was surprised when he saw the cards tonight and really liked the way the they turned out unlike the last time I surprised him by painting the outside door lime green. (sometimes you have to get those crazy ideas out before you can get a better color--the door is now a lovely grey-green)

Nature Papermaking Class

We taught nature papermaking last weekend at the studio. Donna and I spent the two weeks prior prepping fiber--chopping, cooking, rinsing & more rinsing, then beating it into a pulp. It really has a lot of similarities to industrial size cooking!
We found bamboo fiber to be tough as nails! We soaked it for a week and cooked for about 14 hours in lye and it was still pretty tough. We have it soaking in water still trying to soften it up!

We cook fiber in large kettles--I swear a watched pot never boils! We cook with the lids on but need to check them so they don't boil over.

A tangled mess only a papermaker could love! Once the fiber is cooked and rinsed, we "beat it to a pulp" in our beater. This is the plant fiber Yucca which is notoriously bad behaving--see the suds? It can be used to make soap! The first time we beat it at the studio it was like an "I Love Lucy" episode--soap suds were overflowing everywhere--in ginormous proportions! We had to move the beater outside, it was such a mess. This Yucca behaved and made only bitsy suds.

Well behaving Yucca!

Everyone concentrating on their deckle boxes.

Couching newly formed sheets of paper.

These folks made a ton of paper. Yay! It was worth all the cookin' & prepping.