OUR INVITATION
| Making of our invitation： | |
| At first, we were looking for some ready-made invitations we might have liked. However, we were really picky and could not find one we liked, and decided to make them from the scratch! It was a very time consuming (...and back-aching) job, but the finished product was brilliant and we're rally happy with the result. |
Paper Making |
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Contents：50 Milk Cartons/Laundry Starch/Brown
Cardboard（add color）/Gold Tinsel（add character)/Hemp String（add character） |
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| (1) Paper Making began
by soaking milk cartons in water. We had no idea how many milk cartons
we'd need, so we soaked all the ones we had kept for recycling into our
bath tub which was full of warm water. (2) After soaking them overnight or longer, we had to peel off the vynal coating from the milk cartons. It is very time consuming process, and we must have spent at least 2 whole days in the cold winter bathroom. However, we found out later that you SHOULD actually boil the milk carton in a deep pan for more than an hour then the coating would peel off very easily... (3) When all the vynal coatings are peeled off, we had to break the white pulp into small pieces and soak them in the water again. A hand-full of soaked soft pulp, a pinch of brown cardboard (also soaked in the water) and a tea spoon full of laundry starch should be added to the blender with 3 cups of water, then blend throughly. |
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| (4) The wash tub should
be filled with water, then a cup of pulp mixture should be added to the
tub. (5) Add some tinsels and hemp strings (both cut very short-especially the hemp string which needs to be broken into fibre)to tub and mix well. (6) Hold the tool, from the bottom, Frame-1 + Plastic Net + Kitchen Net + Frame-2 firmly by both hands. From far side of the tub to your side, sieve through the water, scooping some pulp on to the nets. Do this about twice. If the paper does not look even, rinse the tool off in the tub, mix the pulp well and start over. |
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(7) Drip the excess water into
the tub, take the frames off, then place the paper face down onto a
towel on a flat surface (still with plastic/kitchen net on the paper).
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(8) Squeeze the paper from one
side to the other(still having the plastic net on top).
Take the plastic net off, then carefully (not to distort the paper shape), peel the kitchen net off. |
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(9) Each piece of paper needs to be
on the different towel surface, so towels should be folded on top of the
paper each time. When all the paper is squeezed on the flat surface, put a flat weight (such as cutting board) on top and leave to drain at least overnight. (10) When the paper is drained enough (dry enough for you to be able to peel it off from the towel), peel it off one by one and iron dry. It takes long time for each piece of paper to dry, even with the iron, so go through the whole batch once and then come back for the second time to dry them completely. |
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Assembling of the Invitation |
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| When our paper making was finished, we had to assemble our invitation. We have put so much thought into the design of our invitation, and the final product was very simple but satisfactory. | |
| On top of the main part of the
invitation, we cut and pasted a different colored paper (also handmade)
and glued a small climbing cord (prusic cord) tied in the shape of a "figure
eight knot". The paper was sized by hand (not by scissors) to keep the handmade paper's character to fit the envelope size. The mountain shape stamp (as you can see on the wall-paper of this page) was pressed on to emphasize our "mountain theme". |
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We could not use our handmade paper for the insert as
it would not work with our computer printer, so we had purchas the matching
color of rice paper for the insert. |
