Collecting rose petals

Rose buds

I have an old rose bush growing in my garden. Every year without fail it blooms producing the most wonderful roses. The scent reminds me of candy crush. This time of year it produces about 20 roses.

Collecting the roses

I cut the roses and place them into a jar with water. They last a few days before I am going to dry them.

Drying the rose petals
This can take a few weeks, I lay them out in a tub in the sunshine. Next I bring them indoors and place them between two pieces of paper, cardboard and a heavy book on top.

When the rose petals have fully dried and all the moisture removed. I will put them into my latest paper making project.
A lovely reminder of summer.

Comments

Starting my journey of making paper at home

L itter picking on a local beach is really where my journey began. I decided to volunteer with primary school children to collect discarded plastic and the like. I felt really proud of myself. I had always wanted to operate a litter picker. I really didn't expect to find much as I frequented this beach on many occasions and had never noticed things that weren't supposed to be there. W ithin the first few hours we had managed to fill so many bags of rubbish that the local Council sent a vehicle to pick the waste up. I found a sharps container full used syringes, so many plastic bottles and discarded balloons, bits of plastic that I was shocked. I grew up with the Wombles of Wimbledon, who were ahead of their times. Picking litter of Wimbledon Common, public funded signs and message telling you to take your litter home. Under no account drop litter in the streets. The one items that was commonly seen everywhere was discarded pull ...

Green Reveal

Twenty four hours is a long time to wait to see the results. I am running out of room to dry all the pages and decided to try stacking the sheets inside old paper. Paper sheets stacked onto each other The bottom sheets didn't really dry and so I placed them around my desk and window ledges. Having a sneaky peek to see if they have dried All good so far even though the sheets are not properly dried I was happy the new method of using pencil shavings has worked. The effect on some of the sheets was amazing. Especially with the little bits of colour that came out of the pencil sharpener. I used watercolour pencils so that the colours would not run into my paper. Watercolour pencil shavings The sheets produced this time had a lovely hint of green. The paper was so much thinner than last time as I had reused some of the old paper and added it to the new pulp. I did this by getting out all the water using a strainer. I then mashed th...

Made it!

I added some petals from the garden. The paper is different sizes and thickness. I am happy with the end product. I tried several ways including different screens and how much mulch to include. The old envelopes I used can be seen in the final product, which I quite like. I did run out of drying areas, I only have so many window ledges and tables. Right next time I am going to make some seed paper and see how that turns out.

Lemon Tree Paper Creator

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