For my best friends 21st birthday I wanted to make her a photo album from scratch. I know how to make paper, and I know how to bind, so surely I could put the two together and have a completely homemade gift for her.
I already knew I was going to make the album when I noticed the blackberries across the road from me were ripe and ready for the picking. I managed to persuade a happy little helper of mine to help me get as many blackberries as humanely possible with out feeling guilty for scrumping them (or whatever the blackberry equivalent is).
We managed to get a bountiful booty of blackberries and were ready for business!
We squished them to get all the juice out we could and added this to a blender of scrapped paper, torn into postage stamp sized pieces.
This mixture was then added to a deep tray of water and using my paper making kit, a mesh frame and a damp sponge I slowly but surely made each of my sheets of paper and left to dry.
I bound the sheets by sewing booklets of them together and covered the hardback cover with some gorgeous paper from Paper Chase.
As you can see the blackberries did not really do much in colouring the pages, but it did at least give them an added bit of texture.
Happy 21st Birthday Amy!
