This class is perfect for easing the minds of our waste conscious community. Handmade paper uses clean scrap paper as the base; a blender chops it all up so it can be mixed with water and become a gooey mess. Creative touches are added by using flower petals, grasses, fibers from broken down baling twine or whatever interesting collectable you can come up with. The resulting paper can be bound in a book and used for journaling, or printmaking, or how about homemade wallpaper as a conversation starter.
The X craft series is a way for Inventive, creative people to trade their knowledge with like-minded crafty people. The classes offer the chance to learn something interesting, useful, marketable or just plain fun from fellow classmates. There’s no requirement to teach a class, but the opportunity is definitely there for anyone with an entrepreneurial outlook and an idea, skill or project to share.
The community members who teach these classes have widely varied skills and backgrounds. Susan Ernsdorff, a chemical engineer who now works at Methow Recycles taught how to make a trend-setting, winter hat from recycled wool sweaters. Alex Williams lives close to the land and is a master of sustainable living skills. He described the entire process of tanning a deer hide as he taught the group to make a buckskin pouch. Donna Keyser is a highly trained artist who also embraces reuse, but emphasizes the creative, artistic aspects of everything she teaches. Her expertise in papermaking came about when she was the print lab technician at Cornish College of the Arts, where printmaking ‘mistakes’ became the raw material beautiful paper.
There is a free preliminary papermaking class on Thursday July 5th from 4-8 pm at TwispWorks - Keyser Studios. Folks are welcome to experiment and help design the class and prepare to share the information in the July 19 workshop which costs $25.
