Wednesday-11:30am

Here's the paper I made--all dried and buckled. These were done our old way--just lay them naked on the table-top plastic--hehe!

Interesting! Look how this bled even more. These red roses must have been dyed.
Karma says hi.

Believe it or not, this is all of the papermaking supplies. From the left: folding table, my old iron, spray starch,two banker boxes...

...(dried plants & color paper scraps and packing paper) and the two papermill boxes (which are filled with supplies and all the paper moulds).

The top banker box in this stack (blender, rose petals, and pressed flowers), canvas sheeting (they use for painting to protect rugs), and a white plastic colander hidden under some felt.

Sponges, a bag of pre-cut paper (my calling cards you couldn't read), cotton linter squares, and two more banker boxes (paper additives and the white/cream paper scraps).

All the equipment I had cleaned from the day before--ready to be packed up.

Our new larger tub for the new 8 1/2 X 11 inch papermill. Plastic trays and the now stained red ironing cloths (good for rags if nothing else).

All the used couch papers--some still drying from yesterday--and the red paper we are using for the Christmas cards. Whew!

Leah came over with their huge rolling cart and we packed all of that on the one cart! Nice! But I wasn't feeling well enough to leave the house. So we cut up some of the grey felt, layered it, and placed it under the cover on the centerof the ironing board. No more ironing board holes on our paper!

Then Leah decided to see if we could iron the dry buckled paper. What the heck--we've never tried that before.

Well, it worked!

They came out just as flat as when we book press them for a day or two--maybe even flatter! So she tried ironing the fold for cards, too. Voila!!

We use a little trick with folding handmade paper that helps avoid having them cracking along the fold. Mist a little water along the area where the fold will be before you bend. Makes the paper pliable and not so stiff. Then just let it dry again folded. I finger pressed the cat hair ones (we didn't dare iron those because we were afraid the cat hair would burn or curl up or something--hehe!). You can either iron or finger press the fold.

We are so excited! Now we can mass produce easily! Just let them lie out to dry like we always did and then iron them flat! TaDa!!

Something good actually came out of me not feeling good enough to go anywhere--and we didn't have to move the ironing board and iron after all. Our cards are all made over here at my place, so we can just bring all the dried paper over here to iron. :)

Leah also showed me all about Picasa and started me up an account. It's kind of like Flickr--a place to put your pictures online--but Leah swears it is easier to use and better. I won't leave Flickr, tho--that's for my art stuff and art groups. But I will use Picasa for other kinds of pictures. It is sooo easy to send a link to entire albums of pictures! And you can have some picture albums private and some public. Awesome!

We had all afternoon to chat and laugh and discuss plans. All of the supplies fit in Leah's hatchback, too--so, later on, off they went to West Fargo.

R&R day today. Maybe I will get to some of my emails and such today? Good grief! I was behind before the computer was incapacitated--hehe! And haven't felt good enough to sit down and spend time here at the computer yet. Blogging is probably still enough today, I don't know. We'll see how the day goes. I may be very slow--but I am persistent--hehe!

Oh--BTW--I never did hear from Daniel Smith.

And it is not like I have never purchased tube paints before.

These are all my watercolors and a few goauche tubes. My 2 cents: I have ordered online from Dick Blick, Art Supply Warehouse, Cheap Joe's, and Jerry's Artarama. I have purchased tubes from the local art store and Concordia College bookstore, too. (I also have some acrylic and oil tubes.) But Daniel Smith has been THE only company that sent me "new" tubes that had been opened and were a mess. AND then refused to accept any responsibility for it. Talk about poor customer service! So--that's it. I have nothing else to say about them unless I have something good to say.

We've still have spring-like weather here. 50s at night and 70s during the day (joy! joy!). We might hit low 80s today and tomorrow, I guess. I hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful day!