CHINA Crafts - Homemade Paper (Super-Easy!)

I procrastinated on this craft for many weeks, convinced that it would be time-consuming and difficult. But I was wrong! It's easy and uses very few ingredients - definitely a must-try project while passing through China.

The original directions I found are here, and another great tutorial with pictures is here. We greatly simplified the process, so we didn't need some of the materials listed in the first set of directions. Here's what we did, in brief:

Homemade Paper Ingredients: Paper, any kind, torn into small-ish pieces Blender, kitchen oil screens Directions: Fill blender with torn paper strips, then add water 2/3 or more of the way up. Blend till smooth. Either pour pulp mixture directly onto the kitchen oil screens OR for a smoother paper, pour the pulp into a baking dish and bring the oil screen up under the pulp (see second link above). Press out extra water with hands (or felt, or a towel). and leave several days to dry.  Voila!

We used white and pink papers, hoping for a swirl effect, but it homogenized into light pink:

When it dried, we did our best to paint the Chinese characters for "I Love You" onto them. Hopefully y'all don't read Chinese.

They served as decorations during our Chinese New Year Feast, and now are shortly to be zipped into the mail as craft-Valentines for the grandparents!

Have fun with this super-easy project! 

* The recipe we used said to add liquid starch if you intended to write on the paper, so we made some homemade liquid starch and added a teaspoon or two. I don't know if that was really necessary - probably not.

** You can also add decorative touches to your paper after the pulp is blended - for example, tiny seeds or small lengths of colored thread.