A close-up of my colourful and fibrous veggie paper.

The inner edge of the apple card is dark because I had to moisten it
in order to fold it without breaking the paper.

Paper doesn’t have to be made out of wood fibres, and it doesn’t have to be bleached and smooth. I had fun making this fruit and vegetable fibre based paper (admittedly it’s quite coarse — like card) and printing on it with fruit and vegetables afterwards. I should have gone the full mile and made the paint out of fruits and vegetables, too!

For more photographs and an explanation of the process, read the full post.

My desk looked like a schoolchild’s. Does all this count as regressive behaviour?

The process is thus:

1. Boil vegetable/fruit matter (peels, odd ends) for five minutes to soften them. At this stage you can also add an egg carton, or whatever scrap card you have lying around, if you want to add bulk. Use an immersion blender (or a regular one) to make a pulp the consistency of a thick porridge. The finer the pulp, the thinner you can make the paper. If you blend it too finely, however, the fibres will be too small to lock into one another, and you also won’t see the textures and colours of the individual ingredients.

For my mixture I used what fruit and veg peels were left over in the house. You can use almost anything, but I used the skins and odd-ends of things like lemons, clementines, spring onions, carrots… Then I tossed in what was left of a box of porridge oats.. and then I threw in the cardboard box they came in, too. And an egg carton. This stage is fun — it’s like making a witch’s potion. You can decide the colour of the paper at this stage by selecting ingredients of a particular colour, or by colouring the mixture with food colouring or paint.

The frame framing its maker.

2. You will need to make a sieve (whatever size and shape you like) in which to mould the paper/card. My dad was kind enough to knock this one together for me (above).

Once you have your frame, you can pour the pulp as evenly as possible into it and then carefully flop out the rectangle of pulp onto a fine dishcloth (i.e. not a towel whose thick material will leave a coarse imprint in the paper) that’s folded in two for thickness/absorbency.

Then lay another folded dishcloth on top and press the paper flat, sandwiched between two planks of wood using — if you’re lucky enough to have one — a press, or, like me, your body weight. This is both to squeeze out excess water so the paper can dry quickly, and very importantly, to push the fibres of the paper into interlocking positions so it’s strong when it dries.

3. The next part is perhaps the most delicate stage of the operation: Carefully peel away the dishcloths and place the still fragile sheet on old newspapers to dry completely.

I ironed on a plank of wood instead of a soft ironing board.

4. The final stage is to iron your dry card flat — or put it between some heavy books for a while — and then guillotine the edges neatly (unless you prefer a rugged finish).

All done!

I wouldn’t advise eating your stamps after use.

I cut in half some fruit and veg and used them as stamps to decorate my paper.

I tested the stamps in my notebook before trying it on the extremely valuable paper.
No way I was making a mistake after all that work.

It is indeed a lot of work, but it’s all great fun and not without its spoils; the finished product can be a notebook cover, the basis of a painting, the basis for a greeting card, material for making a collage, a work of art in itself…!

I learnt how to make paper from an artist in Germany (one Gerhard Feuchter) who, amongst other paper artworks, made sculptures with his paper fibres by colouring the pulp and slathering it onto 3d wire frames to dry.

See also:

*The encrypted poetry book I made and bound in Germany, under the wing of Herr Feuchter.

*All about Plant Fibres and their application in nature and in man-made materials.