Preparation Time/ Crafts fun day

 So a couple of days ago we had a really gloomy rainy day at camp. I spent the entire day doing crafts and preparing for the open house tomorrow!

The craft I chose to work with for the open house is plantable paper. It's kind of like lazy people papermaking, though since we are tearing up pre-made and processed construction paper.. but the process is the same as using cotton linter/fibers!

Here's everything you would need to do this craft/project. I am planning on doing papermaking in my future classroom; I realllllyyyy enjoyed it at Northern this past semester. Kind of hooked...

I tore the construction paper up into very small pieces so the blender didn't have to work so hard. The paper was very lightweight so it was easy to grind into pulp. I soaked it in water before blending to loosen the fibers.

 Blue paper is the best paper... this batch ended up being a little too heavy unfortunately.. I used two full sheets. Later pulp batches only used two half sheets.

 Slimy but perfect. I added a little bit of flower seeds and then blended it again to mix them throughout the pulp.

I didn't get any good pictures of working with this first batch so we'll skip to batch #2..

 Setting up perfectly! One half sheet of green, one half sheet of yellow, and some leftover blue pulp. Seeds came next before another blending.

 Rockland already had papermaking molds in storage and I wanted to use them... so I did. I will be making more for myself and/or future students.. in my spare time. HA HA.

 Pouring the pulp into the molds...

This part was pretty tricky. I didn't have an easy way to transfer the paper and molds to another surface so I ended up re-purposing the other papermaking supplies as couching sheets.

 And flip.

 The real challenge element of this craft is making the paper transportable by the crafters. I tried several different methods using the screens to flip onto paper, flipping the screens onto plates...
I ended up combining scrap paper and screens as couching sheets and transfer supplies. The paper is first transferred to the screen and then a sheet of paper is placed over it.

One of my coworkers made me a paper press though! This sped up the process a lot because instead of having to press the papers and screens by hand (which led to uneven thicknesses and ripped papers) I could put the stack of couching sheets into the press! The less water the paper has in the fibers, the faster it dries. And he even made drain holes for the water - so great :)




The plan for 'make and take' is to transfer the papers onto styrofoam plates and put them into plastic baggies so they can be safely moved. If the crafter doesn't want to carry it with them all day they can write their name on the plate/bag and pick it up later!

 Here are some of the papers drying.. very squishy.

 I made four different colored batches of pulp

After cleaning up the craft dummy run some of my other staff members were able to help with the next task: posters!

Such happy crafters... the rain kept us all inside so we took full advantage of craft time!

Alexis came up with an idea for encouraging donations and help for the camp. The stars and fish can be taken off the poster and people can donate the amount or item listed on the shape! The kayaks had big items/dollar amounts in them... we'll see how effective our poster was after the open house tomorrow.

I made a sign to encourage visitors to come to my craft cabin! Adriana glued the pieces while I worked on other craft/sign-related projects. Camp Michigamme is very colorful with Ms. K at the Craft helm.

 That about does it for now! I will post pictures/ an update on how the craft goes over tomorrow. Michigamme Day is an open house/auction, so I am hoping lots of folks show up for both.. and so I can make some more paper.

Ms. K