Arnold Grummer's Papermaking - Creating Shapes with Paper Pulp

Spring finally seems to showing itself here in our area.  Along with signs of the season popping and blossoming here and there, the robin's and other feathered friends are singing and building their nests for more new life.

Many will be celebrating Easter next Sunday.  My little family will be gathering here to celebrate both the holiday and the five Spring birthday's we have within one month.

While working on making seed papers for my last post I also had the idea to make paper pulp and work with casting shapes with other forms that I have within my supplies.  I found an egg shaped mold that was used to make chocolate or sugar shaped eggs.  I had to try to use this mold to form a large egg shape using paper pulp.

I wanted to experiment with the pulp and find a way to make the shape stiffer.  I feel my experiment was succesful.  After making several batches of pulp I strained as much of the water out as possible.I placed the entire  amount into a bowl and added approximately 1/4 cup of Stiffen Stuff by Beacon Adhesive and mixed it into the pulp.  By hand, I began to pat the pulp into the egg mold bringing the pulp up over the top edge slightly and then repeated the process with the other half of the mold.  I used small pieces of sponges to try to remove as much of the moisture from the pulp as possible.  To help the drying process along, I placed the molds into the microwave and set it at short intervals of 40 seconds several times, beginning at 50% power and working to 100% power for 30 seconds.  After this process the shapes were left to dry completely overnight.  Once dry, the shapes were carefully removed from the molds.  To make the shapes stronger, I brushed several light coats of Stiffen Stuff onto the shapes.  NOTE:  I did several coats on the outside of each form, allowing them to completely dry between coats then repeated the same process on the inside.

From one half of the egg shape I created a candy holder.  The outside was painted with white pearl acrylic paint finish and the inside was painted with a yellow glitter paint.  A handle was fashioned from a strip of handmade paper.  NOTE:  To stiffen the handle, Stiffen Stuff was brushed onto the strip following the same process mentioned above.  A length of decorative ribbon was glued to the handle.  Two paper brads are used to attach the handle to the base.  Fill with "grass" and your favorite candy.

The second half was finished to hold a little chick and some paper flowers for a sweet Spring decoration.  This half was painted with white paint and the covered with glue and sprinkled with white glitter to give it the look of sugar coating.   In the bottom of the egg Icut a piece of styrafoam and glued it to the inside.  Folded green rice paper was cut into thing strips to create paper grass.  Paper punched flowers with leaves were created with a piece of wire placed between to flower punch shapes and placed into the foam.

This project will more then likely lead to more experiments with using pulp to form three-dimensional shapes in the future.

Visit the Arnold Grummer website and when placing an order for product use the code MOM20 this month to receive 20% off your order.