Equipment

• Used paper: in small pieces: plenty
• Fabric: same size as your paper: 20 pieces
• Blender: hand blender: non-food grade
• Bucket: large
• Bucket: small
• Container: slightly larger than your sieve: watertight

Instructions

Turn your scraps into pulp.

Submerge the sheets (scraps, drafts, printing offcuts) and let them dissolve slowly. Then blend until you obtain a fine, supple pulp, free of lumps. One and a half buckets of water to one bucket of paper works quite well for fine paper.

Next, fill the box with about ten centimetres of water. (Two buckets of water in my case). Add the paper pulp to the water. For fine paper, four handfuls of pulp are enough for two buckets of water.

Your mixture is now ready to use. Dip the frame into the water, trying to keep it as horizontal as possible as you lift it out of the tub. Sometimes air bubbles disturb the surface. You can remove them by scraping beneath the screen. Squeeze as much water out of the paper as possible using the second frame and a cloth. When the sheet is ready to be removed from the screen, turn it over gently and place it on a dry cloth. You can peel it off the screen using a card and a cloth. The paper must be completely adhered to the cloth before lifting the frame.

Drying is a lesson in patience. You can change the cloths regularly: every two hours, no more. Each new cloth absorbs a little more moisture and that speeds things up. There you go, your sheets are ready!

Logbook

Day 1

To start with, I made the paper pulp and the sieve frames using mosquito netting. First paper test on my old screen-printing frames, which are much smaller in size. Once I’d got the hang of it again, I switched to a large frame to produce A4-sized sheets.

Day 2

Second paper test. I diluted my mixture to produce a thinner paper. I’m doing my best to manage the size of my screen. Air bubbles regularly form between my screen and the paper, causing creases as it dries. I found a solution for this: scraping the underside of the sieve to let the air out.

Day 3

The paper is taking longer than expected to dry; to save time, I tried to speed up the drying process by using the vacuum cleaner’s fan. It’s a fairly effective technique; I managed to dry six sheets of paper in five minutes. However, the paper must be in direct contact with the air, so it’s more likely to warp.

Day 5

Drying time today; I’ve used up all my fabric. To try and reduce the moisture content, I put my paper in the oven. In 1 minute 30 seconds at 70°C, the paper has already dried out well. However, it warps quickly, so I need to find a way to apply pressure to it.

Day 6

Paper production.

Day 7

Today I managed to produce 32 sheets of A4 paper and around ten sheets of A6 paper. I’m storing them all under a press to flatten them as much as possible.

Attempts to reduce drying time: stacking fewer sheets of paper to increase contact with the air. An effective technique – drying time has been halved. The paper is now dry in one day. Furthermore, there is less handling of the paper whilst it is drying, so there is less risk of the paper becoming brittle.

Day 12

Today, printing tests on different machines: Firstly, cutting the paper to A4 size.

Laser: 1st test: black and white printing from the standard tray, paper setting on thick paper type 5, single-sided.

Text not legible; the paper is not smooth enough for this type of printing. 2nd laser test: changed settings: recycled paper 3 (approx. 100g), double-sided printing.

Failure: paper jam, unable to print double-sided, and the text was illegible too. Comco: 1st test: black and white printing from the standard tray, paper setting on thick paper type 5, single-sided. Paper jam, error message stating that this type of paper cannot be used on this machine. Second attempt yielded no conclusive results.

Riso: 1st test: creation of a black and white file halftoned at 200 dpi to achieve a sufficiently fine screen for comfortable reading of the text. Printing on a black drum.

Success: so far, this has been the most effective printing technique; the text is legible and the Riso copier handles this type of paper very well, despite its texture and embossed surface.

Day 14

Weekly review: although not all my print tests were conclusive, I now have a clear idea of the printing options available to me. I can therefore prepare my print files for next week. I haven’t had time to start the cyanotype tests, so I’m not yet sure what results I can achieve; however, I have little doubt that this technique shouldn’t cause me any problems other than the paper curling.

Day 15

I’m changing the screen and opting for a screen printing mesh for a finer finish. First challenge: I’d only ever worked on A6-sized screen printing mesh before; a larger frame makes the task trickier: controlling the thickness of the paper and peeling it off requires much greater precision and a gentler touch. First observation: the screen printing mesh produces a finer finish, the mesh is less visible and the water runs off more easily.

Making the paper takes an enormous amount of time and patience. Today I’m trying to work out how I can optimise this time. After some thought and calculation, I won’t be able to make more than 30–35 sheets this week.

Day 17

Cyanotype test

2 mins; 4 mins; 6 mins; 15 secs; 30 secs; 10 mins; no exposure: nothing worked; the paper came out in various shades of blue, but none of them printed the image. I’ve never come across a result like this before. Depending on the paper, it’s true that the paper takes on the colour to a greater or lesser extent, but I’ve never found myself in a situation where the paper comes out completely blue with such a wide range of exposure times. I don’t understand. If the problem is that my paper is too basic, I would need to soak it in a more acidic bath to try and acidify it before papering it; will changing the paper’s pH be enough to prevent the iron from precipitating?

Day 18

Cyanotype test again: ran out of solution so I bought a new one (mixture already prepared)

As it was drying, I noticed the paper was losing all its colour. For this second test, I let one sheet dry before exposing it, and exposed the second one straight away; then, for comparison, I took another sheet of paper on which it had already worked as a test. After 20 minutes, no result; the sheets haven’t changed colour at all and I wonder if my lamp is working properly. I’ll try with sunlight tomorrow morning. Another failure.

Riso printing: The texture of the paper makes it difficult to print text, even with a Riso printer. I’d need to increase the pressure so that the paper gets into the holes in the paper, but the paper is too fragile to withstand increased pressure.

Making A3 to A2 sheets

How can I increase the size of my sheets without increasing the size of my frames? Larger frames would be difficult to handle on my own, so I’m going to try sticking several sheets together. First test: making an A3 sheet. Place the first sheet of paper on a piece of fabric, then overlap the second sheet by one to two centimetres. The wetter the sheets are, the more likely they are to become a single sheet. No need to use rice glue; this technique works very well.