Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush....

Today, the kids and I spent time at a local art gallery specializing in the art of handmade paper.  Together, we took a private lesson in the art/science of paper making. The gallery makes its papers from various base fibers including banana leaves, cotton and mulberry trees, all grown on its property. Our lesson focused on paper made from the mulberry tree.

The top is the branch with the bark
partly peeled off.
The bottom is  a bundle of dried bark. 

First, a branch was cut and soaked in water.  Its bark was stripped and soaked further.

Once softened, we banged away on segments with hand made mallets and reduced the whole thing to a pulp (this took quite a while and a hefty amount of elbow grease).

The pulp was then placed in another tub of water to which we added leaves and flowers (which we also freshly picked from the garden).  

This mixture was then strained in a mesh frame with each each "sheet" being gently placed on top of a secondary wire mesh.

We made 7 total and stacked each on top of the next.  Once we had a stack, we placed it under a press to draw out an excess water.

Each sheet was slowly peeled and placed on a piece of wood to dry and was gently rolled out to remove creases.

This whole process took us nearly 2 hours and several of the steps in the artist workshop were begun before our arrival.

The kids thought that making paper was fun and interesting.  They were really engaged the whole time we were there.

Afterwards we hung out at Meme's house.  Andrew and Adam took over the recliner as well!