Make a Giant Paper Canvas From Repurposed Paper

Necessity, not scarcity is the mother of invention. While laziness is the father. Not all inventions were birthed out of necessity, most of which are created to make life easier. While others were birthed by accident.

What does this have to do with paper you ask. Well i couldn't find the size paper i needed by the time frame i needed this project done. So i decided to make my own. I looked at a bunch of ways to make paper but they all used a container or tub of water. I don't have a tub that large so the next alternative was to bring the water to the screen.

☆ Used paper
☆ 4 - 2x4's 8 feet long
☆ 1 Blender (don't use a new one as blending paper could jack things up)
☆ A roll of door screen
☆ Heavy duty stapler
☆ Thin wire to sew screen
☆ Towels
☆ Something flat to squeeze water out of pulp

☆ Cut paper into strips with scissors or tear up by hand. You could also use a paper "shredder" but the turtles would easily defeat him. (Bad dad joke)

☆Put paper into blender. If you don't have a blender, take a trip to the local pawn or thrift store. It doesn't have to work perfect, it just has to blend paper. I found filling the blender half full of paper and filling the rest with water worked well.

☆Make a frame to hold pulp. For this i just made a frame of 2x4's and put stakes on each side to keep it somewhat level off the ground. I made the frame a little over 4 feet x 4 feet to allow for cutting after. This method gets pretty heavy on the screen so that's why i made it close to the ground. In hindsight i would have stapled the screen to the top of the frame instead of bottom and reinforced it with metal bands. But that's just more expense and this worked great.

Pour the pulp onto the screen. Self explanatory here. Just make sure you get nice even coverage. If you find it's clumping you can use a garden hose to help spread it out.

☆Squeeze water out of pulp. Start by placing a tarp under the screen, large enough to cover under entire frame. Next start by squising it with something flat towards the ground. Be gentle, you don't want to detach your screen. I used a cutting board to keep an even pressure on the pulp. After you have done that you'll want to use a towel on the bottom and one on the top and compress again to get more water out. When you have got most of the water out, let it dry.

☆ Once your paper is still a bit damp you'll want to transfer it to somewhere flat. Maybe a basement floor. I put a board over everything and added weights. Let it sit overnight.

☆ Uncover the paper and allow to air dry. After a few days your paper should be done. Now you'll be able to cut to any size you need.

☆ All that's left is adding artwork. I used charcoal to mimic a war show intro my brother and sister in law liked. I'm not a charcoal artist, i use more acrylic and spray paint. However i think it turned out pretty good.

Hope this inspires someone to be creative.