Whistle while you wait

It's been just over a month since we successfully reached our Kickstarter goal, and we've been hammering away at our to-do list to get the studio up and running. We're happy to report that we now have our very own 1-inch button maker, and have been merrily making TEAM PAPER buttons for our kickstarter backers. We can't wait  to play around with making buttons with some handmade paper, and we will be sure to put them up in our online store (coming soon!)

Our timeline for opening has been pushed back by a few weeks while we wait for equipment and supplies to arrive. If you follow us on Facebook then you probably saw that we placed an order for a custom made Mark Lander Hollander Critter Beater. Mark is a really nice guy and we're happy to be working with him, but he does live in New Zealand, and he is a small shop, so the turn around time for our order is a little longer than we anticipated. We're happy to wait so that we can get the best, most affordable beater we can get, and can't wait to crank that baby up and start making some cotton rag paper! 

Another major piece of equipment that we're waiting on is our Aardvark 12-Ton press, which we're purchasing from Carriage House Paper, based out of Brooklyn, NY. Once the press is ready it'll be shipped by truck out to us, hopefully in the coming weeks. We'll keep you posted!

Originally we planned on ordering a Reina Paper Drying Box from Carriage House Paper. After crunching the numbers it makes more sense for us to build our own custom restraint drying box system. We've already got the basic plans for creating a drying box and are going to save thousands of dollars that we can put towards supplies and our studio garden. We can't wait to get the garden going, and to experiment with making pulp from local plants. We're even thinking about growing our own Paper Mulberry trees in pots, to harvest the bark shoots for making Kozo paper. 

So if you've been waiting for news from us and wondering when we'll be open for business, the answer is a hopeful- soon! In all likelihood we'll start having workshops in November, and would like to have a grand opening party coinciding with the St. Johns Last Friday art walk on Nov. 30th. 

We hope to have our workshop schedule posted by Oct. 22nd, so students can register with at least a weeks notice. Until then, if you have any questions about our workshops let us know.

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For now, we leave you with our latest experiment with recycled pulp- a paper lamb! A few weeks back we made some dark blue recycled paper pulp with embedded flower seeds. We had some leftover pulp that we strained almost all the water out of and stuck in our refrigerator at home. After many days of thinking- we really should do something with that pulp- we finally did. As the pulp is pretty moist and it is air drying in the candy molds, it will likely take more than a week to dry. We'll be sure to post pics. when it's removed from the mold. Fingers crossed that it looks like a lovely little blue lamb!

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