Have you ever been like, “Hmm, I have so much extra paper but can’t use it!?” If you answered this question with, “Yup, that’s me. I have that problem,” I hate to break it to you, but you’re wrong. You can do so many things with that extra paper, such as: make a paper fort, burn it while hosting a bonfire, take up origami, or wrap yourself up like a little homeless lady. Too bad I’m not going to tell you how to do any of those things, especially origami; origami and I don’t mesh well. Instead, I will tell you about the joy of how to make paper from, you guessed it, paper.
Things you’ll need:
- A sponge
- Water (copious amount; you may want to pay your water bill)
- A car or a really great friend with a car
- About $26.79 (and $89.62 for that water bill)
- Paper, I guess… wait, you already have a bunch
- The will to actually make paper
The steps go as such:
- Chop up all that paper into bite size pieces (be careful not to choke on the teeny tiny pieces).
- Soak the bits in water.
- Go to The Goodwill, buy a blender, make sure it works, clean it out real nice and such, and never use it for food.
- Fill your new blender about ¾ full with water.
- Add the soaked paper bits to blender water so it’s about ⅓ the amount of water in the blender.
- Blend to a pulp (this will probably take a awhile since you really cheaped out on the blender).
- Clean up the giant mess you made if you forgot to put the lid on before blending in step 6 (this actually happens often).
- Empty out one of your old Christmas totes (I know you have at least one; we all have about seven) and fill it generously with water.
- Dump your pulp into the bin of water. One blender full is not going to be enough pulp to make paper though.
- Repeat steps 4-6 as well as step 9 (and 7 if you really just don’t have it together today).
- Once it looks like there’s a good amount of pulp in your vat (it should kinda look like murky swamp water) you can finally start pulling sheets of paper.
- Go back to The Goodwill and buy 2 identically sized frames, some old window screens, that dress that caught your eye when you were there earlier (just go for it, you look great in yellow), and an old bed sheet of the fitted variety—you’ll need it later and we cannot be going back to The Goodwill a third time today.
- Pop in a frozen pizza; this is a ton of work and you’re getting pretty hangry by now.
- Make your screen and deckel (I’m sure there’s a tutorial for this on The YouTube).
- Tightly cover a flat surface with the old bed sheet.
- Dampen the sheet.
- Hold your screen and deckel together and finally pull a sheet of paper from the vat.
- Remove the deckel and flip the sheet of paper unto the damp bed sheet.
- Use a sponge to remove excess water from the paper.
- Remove the screen.
- Take your pizza out of the oven; it’s probably burnt to a crisp by now.
- Repeat steps 16-20 until you reach your desired amount of paper.
- Let your paper dry.
- Clean up.
- Peel the paper off the bed sheet once dry.
- Realize that this didn’t solve your problem of having an excessive amount of paper.
- Binge watch New Girl.
And so there you have it; 27 easy steps to making paper.
P. S. If you have extra pulp left over you can save it for the next time you feel crafty and want to make paper again.