I've waited to post about this project, but I do believe all the invitations have been mailed and have reached their destinations. My son and his fiancee had the notion to make their wedding invitations, paper and all!
After the first attempts with various screens and not too attractive gray and misshapen bits of paper, many people, myself included, told them to go buy some handmade paper!
I give them credit, they persevered and came up with some very original invitations that can be planted--(there are seeds imbedded in the paper!)
Improvements were made along the way:
A blender purchased from a thrift shop and yellow office paper ready to be recycled,
a better screen and deckle set up, thanks to their friends who made them. The wider or deeper deckle catches more pulp, making a thicker paper,
a little strip of felt along the very edge, to help the paper release from the screen onto the larger piece of felt. It does make a ridge, but I had to do
something to get that paper onto the felt and this worked most of the time.
I don't have a picture for the next step, but I found out it's an important one--
to roll out the paper. After getting the paper onto the felt (which was the tricky part), We laid another piece of felt on top, placed the paper and felt sandwich on a folded towel and with a rolling pin, rolled it. This flattens the paper and also rolls the water out, to aid in drying.
Peel the dry paper off the felt. (notice the cat prints on the closest paper) I then pressed the dry papers under a pile of books.
All the invitations were decorated and written out by hand. We had a few marathon paper-making days here--I learned a lot, and now I'm making a few screens in the hopes that I can create paper with my granddaughter's class at her school. Yes, for those who've followed this blog, you know that I've stayed away from art teaching for quite some time, but it felt right to volunteer some art lessons to her class. So far, I'm enjoying being in the classroom again and most importantly, I'm embarrassing my granddaughter--(in a good way) If I get the chance to click a few pictures, I may post about the lessons.
My granddaughter expressed an interest to be in her school's variety show doing a ribbon dance. I made these clumsy ribbon wands using supplies I had on hand. The streamers are a touch too heavy, cut from some packaging material I've held onto. I didn't have any narrow cardboard tubing and I thought sticks would be too painful if and when they get too close. I cut a large tube in half down the middle and used clear packaging tape--pretty ugly. I used a lollipop stick, glued it into a hole drilled in a cork. Eyelet/ed the folded end of the streamer to turn freely around the pop stick and glued the bead on the end. I'll probably refine these--find lighter ribbons--silk would be nice--better tubing, but these were fun on the beach!
