Seeded Paper Tutorial

Last week I met with a group of ladies to trade our hand made cards.  Our theme was Easter/Spring and our technique was watercolor.  For this trade, I decided to tackle the seeded paper technique.  I envisioned making fifteen cards made out of seeded paper, even though I've never made it before.  It was a very ambitious goal that took me three tries until I finally got it right.  In fact, it took me about three hours to finally get it right!.  I finished it at around seven in the evening on Tuesday night.  Talk about motivation, determination and stamina.  I wish I could include that experience in my resume, haha. 

My son came outside to see what it was that I was doing.  Once he learned what I was up to he said, "mom, I don't know about politics but I don't think I could find another lady in this City, that has your day job, making seeded paper at seven o'clock at night," the boy sure is funny.

Well, hopefully with my tutorial you won't have to spend hours making seeded paper yourself, if you decide you want to try it.
Here's what you'll need:
paper, water, window screen, three towels, blender, small seeds, drinking glass and maybe a glass of wine too, why not.
  
You will need some shredded paper or cut into pieces and leave in water for a few minutes to soak.  I used a few brown grocery bags:

To make the pulp, place the paper in blender in small amounts at a time and blend with plenty of water:

If you use white scrap paper, you can add color by using this product I found a Michael's Arts and Crafts Store.  You would just add the sheet of paper with the color you want to the blender:

I decided to keep mine brown as it looked earthy.
Once you have finished, it will look like this:

Add your seeds in at this time to the pulp and mix in with your hands.

(If you haven't drank the wine yet, this might be the best time to do so)

Now to the hard part.  Transferring the pulp to your window screen.  I placed three folded towels under my window screen to catch the water underneath.

Take the pulp and gently spread it across your window screen with your hands, try to spread it thinly without handling too much, use plenty of water when you spread it on your screen.  I guess the most important tip I have for this process is to use a LOT of water when transferring the pulp and use little pulp so that your paper will dry thinly, not too thick. 

Next, take a drinking glass and roll it on top of your pulp and press down gently as you roll.  This will squeeze some of the water out and flatten the paper a little.  

Let it dry over night for about twenty four hours.  Cut your paper to the sizes you need:

And here's my finished card:

I made fifteen of these cute cards to give away to the ladies and I received fifteen different ones in return.  Not all of them are in the picture, I had already sent a few to friends and loved ones. 

Happy Spring Everyone!