Week #16 - Seed Paper Tutorial

I'm going to try a new tutorial look I've been seeing around the blogosphere lately, which I think might be a help to me since I tend to write tutorials which are a little word-heavy.

For weeks #16 and #17 I'm forcing myself into spring spirit, to make up for mother nature's poor job of delivering on my spring expectations.  So for this week's craft and tutorial, I'm demonstrating how to make seed paper.  For those who don't know, seed paper is one of the most fun and easy crafts you can do at this time of year - it simply involves recycling paper to make new paper embedded with seeds, flower petals, and all sorts of other good things. Once its set you can make confetti, cut shapes to send in cards, cut gift tags, and more and the end product is a paper which you can then plant and have grow in your garden or windowsill.

Pretty fantastic no? So here. We. Go!

You'll need
- some screen (wire, cloth or screen printing screen)
- a wooden frame (from an old picture frame, an old canvas frame, etc)
- staple gun
- a blender
- water
- lots of towels
- a baking tray and rack for drying
- a few sheets of news paper
- some scraps of coloured paper (I used handmade natural papers)
- seeds of any choice
- flower petals of any choice

I used a lot of newsprint to get a blue-ish grey colour and then added smaller scraps of coloured paper to get my desired effect.

At this point I turn it over onto a baking sheet wrapped in a towel, and then lay a towel on the opposite side of the screen so that it is being absorbed on both sides.

To let it dry, I turn it out onto a baking sheet and let it dry for a few hours... once its a little sturdied I turn it over again onto a cooling rack so that it dries evenly on both sides. It's ok if it dries a little uneven and curls a bit, we will press it in the next steps.

I made a set of 20 little hearts, as well as 10 gift tags like these;

As per usual, these will of course be auctioned off on e-bay to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support. Stay tuned to the blog for announcement of the auctions opening, and of course in the meantime you are free to bid on other auctions currently open:

What do you think of the new tutorial format? please let questions or comments below!