It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

...a papermaking studio! Since our last post we've made some progress, and still have a last minute home stretch to get the studio up and running at full capacity.

Our Mark Lander Hollander "Critter" Beater arrived- and she's a beaut! After getting an electrically savvy friend to help us wire up the motor (many thanks Alex!), and us wheeling the whole thing over to a local auto parts store to get the perfect fitting belt (the auto parts salesman was confused but amused), we fired up the Critter this past week with great success! Below is a video of our first batch of pulp in the Critter. 

We beat cardboard and recycled paper junkmail for about 6 hours. The photo of Jenn below shows the first sheets of paper from the batch as it's air drying. Due to its thickness, and our current lack of a press, it's taking a few days for the papers to dry. We'll be making these papers into postcards for some of our Kickstarter backers.

---

These will become postcards

That brings us to this coming Fri. when our 12-ton Aardvark Press will arrive from Carriage House Paper in Brooklyn, NY, along with some highly anticipated supplies like pulp pigments, pulp fibers (kozo and bamboo!), formation aid, etc. Once the press is here it will greatly assist in our ability to produce larger, more consistent runs of papers. We're also anticipating the arrival of blotters and double walled cardboard sheets for the restraint drying box we built last weekend. With the beater, press, and drying box in place, we'll be papering up a storm!

---

Another view of the studio set-up in progress.

On Sat. Dec. 1st we'll hold our first workshop. We're super excited (and a little nervous honestly), for our Papermaking for Kids! class. We have 1 student registered so far, and would love to have some others join in on the fun. So if you know any kids aged 6-10 that like to get crafty and messy, send them our way. Click here for more info. on upcoming workshops and to sign-up.

---

Also, look what we picked up this past week- our TEAM PAPER shirts for Kickstarter backers! They look so great, and it was a great experience working with the local screenprinting company, Little Red Press. We'll be sending out the shirts in the coming weeks as we package them up with other rewards, like buttons and postcards. 

For those Kickstarter backers that chose seed papers as rewards, our production schedule is a little backed up and we will likely not be mailing them out until Jan. 2013. If you were hoping to have your seed papers to give as gifts during Dec. please shoot us an email at studio@pulpanddeckle.com so we can put a rush on your order. Thanks for everyone's understanding and patience, and our apologies for the delay! 

Making 285  sheets of seed paper of various colors with varied seeds, takes a bit of time.

And for anyone wondering about the glue we found on the floor of the studio after taking up the carpet, after doing some experimenting and cleaning, it looks like over time the glue will take care of itself because it is water soluble. As the floor of the studio gets wet while we're working, we can squeegee the glue up bit by bit. We'll also be using anti-fatigue mats in areas where we and our students are working, and this should keep things comfortable for everyone. 

If you want to stay up to date on our latest classes, events, products, and when we'll have our Grand Opening Party (date TBD), sign-up for our monthly "Paper Free  Paper Notes" email newsletter. 

That about brings us up to date! Here's a link to our most recent press release that we'd love for you to share far and wide so we can get the word out about our workshops. After we wrap up production of our kickstarter rewards we'll start working on products for our online retail store. Any special requests?

newpaperstudiopulpdeckleisopen.pdf
File Size:	128 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

---

P.S.- the paper lamb we worked on in our last post was a bust. I think we missed a couple of important steps in the process to keep the paper in a solid shape. We'll play around some more with sculptural projects like this and report back!