One of the prevailing crafty themes on the internet (in keeping with rustic chic, like mason jars) is upcycling pallets. The best part, theoretically, is that the materials are all free – but the problem with this theory is that the project still isn’t free. Unless you’re someone with a garage of wood tools, or you happen to live with or near someone who does, all you have is a pile of free pallets. Your options are then to either buy tools to break down the pallets, or rent them from your local hardware store.
I rented a sawzall from my town’s hardware store, and was mildly surprised that I wasn’t asked to sign a waiver. I half expected someone to check whether there would be an adult present while I was using it. Plus the blades, plus renting a palm sander, plus the sandpaper discs, I totaled about $80 just to break down the pallets. Not exactly a cheap resource, after all…but then, I have to remind myself that at least the wood was free.
Now I have stacks of wood planks instead of a pile of pallets. I don’t think I earn enough money to have hobbies.
In my latest recycling efforts, I’m making a braided rug out of old jeans which are too worn out to donate. It’s the first long-term project I’ve undertaken in a while; usually, long-term craft projects end up set aside and discarded somewhere down the line, but I have hopes for this one (and at least two more pairs of jeans). Fun fact, one pair of jeans can make 21 feet of braid. I don’t know exactly how many jeans are in this rug, but I think it’s greater than two and a half. Right now, it’s is about the size of two sleeping cats, or one moderately sized human butt, feet not included.
I’m probably not ever going to be a full-blown homesteader or even a truly “green” person, but I make an effort where I have the skills.
After a few unsuccessful attempts at handmaking recycled paper on very large frames, I broke down and asked for help to resize my frames so they would fit in a bucket, like all the hobby-mommy bloggers have. Help was graciously given, and I found myself with a proper handmade mould and deckle for paper roughly 10″x12″, made from thrift store wooden frames and hardware store window screen. Astonishingly, practicing a craft the way everyone has always been doing it actually works. Who would have thought?
I now make an average of two pages of recycled, handmade paper per day, pulling the paper in the morning before work and tucking them under my bed in front of my Rinnai heater to dry during the day. I described this process to a friend who said, “Sounds like a fire hazard, but alright.” I scoffed. I never set my heater above 68 at the very most, which couldn’t possibly heat paper to ignition point. But then, examining some of the pages I’ve made, I found crispy, brown edges, as on just-cooked phyllo dough. Fire hazard, indeed.
While I haven’t mastered the thin, smooth, letter-writing sheets that I’d imagined, recycled paper is rustic and texturey. I would highly recommend against using it as letter paper, as the one sheet I mailed took three stamps, but there may be other uses for chunky, textured paper. I’ve bound a few fat little notebooks with it for odd, almost-useful-but-mostly-just-entertaining Christmas gifts, and considered (though haven’t yet tried) painting on it.
Each of the paper slurry blends has been composed of slightly different ingredients, but they’re generally made up of junk mail, notes to myself, shopping lists, fliers and strips* from the bookshop where I work, paper bag scraps, bits of used wrapping paper, scrapbooking paper which I bought in 2009 and am definitely never going to use, and any unattended paper which falls into my greedy goblin hands. Does it matter that I haven’t found an actual use for my recycled paper yet? Absolutely not. Somehow the making of a thing, useful or not, desirable or not, is itself compelling, as though creating a pile of something – words, paper, crafts, images, blog posts – is proof of the worthwhileness of existing.
Wishcycling is a thing.
*Strips are a funny piece of trivia for those who have never worked in a bookstore. Bookstores buy books from the publisher at a discount on the price printed on the jacket, and, if they don’t sell, then they send them back to the publisher for credit. Some books aren’t worth enough to the publisher to send back, and so bookstores tear the cover off, mail it back to the publisher, and throw the rest of the book away. These are called “strips,” and are marked next to the barcode with a triangle symbol around an S. Mass markets are almost always strips, as are many kids’ and YA paperbacks.
I’m essentially turning into a millennial-hobby-crafting-mom, without the babies. My most recent experiment in the realm of arts and crafts was making paper by hand, which is to say, expending a lot of time and effort to make paper out of…paper.
The idea was recycling. Could I turn junk mail into letter stationery? Could I not just save money, but also have an endless supply of artisanal, hand-crafted paper? Could I pretend that I’m doing my part to live a greener lifestyle by making paper instead of buying it? Can I impress my friends by sending them letters written on handmade paper?
While I haven’t found a way to answer the above questions in the affirmative, I’ve learned at least one thing not to do: don’t try to make recycled, hand-crafted paper out of newspaper. The ink comes off and sticks to hands, cloths, blender, bucket, shower, everything the light touches. The paper I’ve made so far dried slowly, only turning into paper after spending an afternoon perched by a wood stove. The final product is stiff, thick, and chunky, flaking and breaking when I fold it. Not exactly artisanal, or the stuff of a hobby mommy blog. But it’s an experiment.
