Paper-making and a meme

Handmade Paper
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

On Saturday, I experimented with paper-making along with several of my crafty girlfriends: fuzzymitten, lainevierge, superfink, and callmepavlov. We get together for crafty parties every month or two and have knitted, sewed, baked, and carved rubber stamps in the past. It's fun to try out new things, teach each other new skills, and inspire one another to be more creative. We used the technique described in this tutorial. It was messy, but lots of fun.

We collected all sorts of scraps for our paper: leaves, petals, fabric, tissue paper, wrapping paper, old comics. Just make sure that you don't use glossy paper because it won't break down as well. Coloured tissue paper has a lot of dye, so it's a good choice if you want to add colour since colour dilutes a lot when making paper with this method. The paper shown above had dark purple tissue paper scraps added to a greyish paper slurry. It looked quite dark when wet, but dried to a pale blue-purple.

I was also tagged by fuzzymitten for this meme.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was just starting my B.Math in Computer Science.

2. What are five (non-work) things on my to-do list for today?
ironing, pattern-making, reading, watching a movie, yoga

3. Snacks I enjoy:
toast, chocolate, fruit (especially berries in the summer!), ovaltine

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
It's hard to really imagine, but I expect I would travel more and I'd like to think that I'd give a lot of that money away.

5. Places I have lived:
BC: Vernon, Vancouver
AB: Calgary
SK: Saskatoon
ON: Waterloo, Ottawa
QC: Montreal

So I have some means of comparison when I say that I love Montreal.

6. Jobs I have had:
lab assistant, software tester, software developer, web developer, tech writer/editor, artist

Consider yourself tagged if you'd like to be!