Recycling Paper

Tiffany Van Mooy shows the youth group some of her
paper made art.

The large tub is filled with the slurry and we used sponges
to soak up the extra water.

Sunday, Feb 3rd was all about paper.  After a quick lesson about how paper is made.  Tiffany Van Mooy brought in some of her recycled paper sculptures and showed the youth group some of the cool things that can be made by reusing paper.

Then it was time for us to get our hands dirty and make our own paper out of old paper.  We took the old paper and pureed it in a blender with some water.  This purple oatmeal-like "slurry" was poured into a plastic tub and mixed around using our hands.

Then we took something called a "deckle" and scooped up some of the slurry.  The deckles were made by taking some fiberglass screen and clothes pinning it to aluminum baking trays with holes cut in them.  This let the water drain out and allowed the woods fibers called lignin to bond with each other.

We dabbed the extra water off of the paper with some sponges and set them out to dry.  After a few days, we had paper.  It is kind of heavy, almost like card stock and will work great for sending thank you notes.

Here is a video about how other people make paper.