Books made with our homemade paper

Today we used our homemade paper from last week to make covers for little books. Levi's comment when we were done was, "It's like making the paper, it's so fun I don't want to stop." He completed 3 books. I made six, four to give to my friends at my book club, one for myself and one more to give away.

We used these directions for 5-stitch bookbinding from Zum Gali Gali Rubber Stamps. We first learned to make these little books a few years ago at the local Asian Festival. It was so fun that I came home and made lots more books. I made them for place cards for dinner on Chinese New Year, I gave them away, and I carried them in my purse to jot notes on.

Our paper measured about 5.5 x 8.5, so we used one sheet to make the front and back covers of our larger books. For the smaller books we cut (or tore) our paper into four sections and made 2 smaller books. The smaller books are perfect for keeping in a purse to jot notes to oneself. When Levi was smaller I kept one in my purse so that if he said something cute while we were out and about I could just record it in my booklet, knowing that if I didn't jot it down I would probably forget it or get it all jumbled up. It's fun to look back at the little notes I've written.

Levi's books

The red flecks in the orange paper are scraps of red napkins.
The dark purple flecks in the blue paper are also napkins, the yellow flecks are dried flower petals and the sparkles come from glitter added to the mix.

mini books for my friends at book club

The white stitching is done with dental floss, and the brown
stitching is done with linen thread.

mini book for me

These are lots of fun to make and not too hard if you read the entire instructions.

Sharon

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss and Paper Making

I've always loved Dr. Seuss and his magical books. Cole and Levi have also enjoyed his books over the years. I like to celebrate his birthday by serving green eggs and ham for breakfast. I think the boys get a kick out of it.



Today we read several of his books: Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, The Cat in the Hat, Hop on Pop and My Many Colored Days. I read Green Eggs and Ham as Levi ate his breakfast. Levi read the next two out loud before we went on to other work. As he did his vocabulary and spelling assignments I made some little candy eggs with green yolks.



Levi decorated his folder for this month's paperwork. I traced the Cat with black Sharpie marker and he did the rest. (I got the template here, at the Art Projects for Kids blog.) I love the way the hat turned out! He looked to a few of the books for his color inspiration. He noticed as he looked through the books that each one used only a few main colors. Being March, I gave him a little lesson on drawing shamrocks. It was harder for him than I had imagined.



I had planned to do a drawing project for today but changed my mind part way into our reading. After reading the Lorax we talked about the message of the book and I then pulled out some fliers we got at the Oregon Logging Conference this past weekend. While reading one about recycling, Levi commented that it would be fun to make paper and I decided right then to do that project today instead of drawing. Making paper was on my to-do list anyway.

We will actually be using this as a 2 or 3 part project. Today will be the paper making day. In a day or so, after the paper has sufficiently dried out, we will make a book using our piece of paper as the cover. I will fill the book with drawing paper so that he will have a nice little sketchbook to put in the car or his pack.

I happen to have a mold and deckle, pulp remnants and lots of tissue paper and napkins for paper making. I got it years ago after taking a class at a local rubber stamp store. It's been several years since I have done anything with it.

We put a few cups of warm water into our blender and added some of the pulp remnants (these are hard chunks of white paper pulp). Then we added scraps of colored napkins to color our mixture. After blending it for a few seconds we floated our mold and deckle on a large bowl of cool water and poured our pulp over the mold. After jiggling it around a little bit to be sure it covered evenly we removed the mold from the water. The deckle was then removed and a piece of fabric was pressed against the wet paper to wick out some of the moisture. Then we removed the paper from the mod and put it between 2 sheets of fabric, layered it on some towels and rolled it with a rolling pin to extract the excess moisture. The paper was then set aside to dry.

Levi making a piece of paper. "This is fun!"

Paper pieces drying on top of the mini trampoline.

You can google paper making to find more specific instructions if you need.


Don't forget to check back to see what we do with our paper.

Sharon