How to Make your Own Paper Board

You can always make hundreds and even thousands of crafts made of recycled paper. One of my most treasured crafts is the recycled paper board which I will show on this post on how to make your own. This one was my own project I made almost 4 to 5 years ago. My environmental concern drives me in making crafts that are primarily made of recycled materials.

In making Recycle Paper Board, what we need are the following:

• Used paper
• Dye
• Stapler and Staple wire
• Wooden Frame
• Cloth
• Water
• Pail with water
• Large Basin
• Blender (Optional)
• Masking Tape (Optional)

You can also make your  own wooden frame by using used woods. But you can also buy a wooden frame with attached mesh in Bookstores or Hardware, and in this case you don't need a cloth and stapler & staple wire.

Here are the steps in making your IMPROVISED MOLD with cloth:

Step 1 - Attached all four woods using nail and hammer to make a square shape.

Step 2 - Place a cloth above the frame and staple it. Make sure that the cloth is not loosely attached, this is to make sure that the bottom of paper has even finish once dried up.

Step 3 -   You may wrap the frame with masking tape. This is to minimize clogging of paper fibers on the edges of the frame.

Now you already have your improvised mold.

Here are the steps to make our own PAPER BOARD.

Step 1 - Prepare your pail with water. You may also use any type of container with large opening mouth. In this case, I used a small pail with 1 liter of water.

Step 2 - Drop all your scratch paper. Make sure that you remove unnecessary objects like staple wire, scotch tape etc. as these would cause an undesirable effects

Step 3 -  Mix water and paper well. If you hate mixing using your hand, you may use a blender. Take note that if you prefer to mix manually, make sure that papers are properly dissolved wherein its texture is very fine and smooth.

 Step 4 - Mix dissolved paper with dye. 1 sachet of dye is equivalent of 1 full scoop of both hands.

Step 5 - Pour water on the large basin of about 5 liters of water. If you want a thinner board you can pour greater than 5 liters amount of water.

Step 6 - Dip your mold in the mixture and make sure that paper fibers are evenly distributed.

Step 7 - Expose the mold directly to the sun and wait for 24 to 48 hours to complete the process as it is already dried.

We're DONE.

Tip: You will only know that your paper board is completely dried once it will pop-up itself. You will notice that your board is curling, this is just a normal effect. You may iron it using flat iron to press it and to minimize curling and curves.

Original Craft by the author (Neil).