Some of the finished results

Here's a few of the cards I've made. These are from last night, and have (clockwise from top left) glitter, paper shred, a postage stamp, and bits of yarn added.
The edges are quite irregular, and I'm still refining the process. This morning I added green paper to the leftover blue (not a lot of that left), and have made some green paper. The blue batch made 18 cards - so probably around 8 cups of blue pulp is what I made. Way more than I'd intended. I blame impetuous enthusiasm. I made about half as much of the green, with a bit less water. I'm still working out exactly how I will trim them down to the 2.5" x 3.5" format to which an ATC must conform. Do I wet the edge and carefully tear off the excess, or trim with scissors (ruining the irregular edge)? I may try both, and see what I think looks and works best. As I get more experienced with this process, I hope the need for trimming is reduced.

IT WORKED!!!

My experiment was a success! After discussing the possibilities with an employee at Hobby Lobby, I came to this solution.

Using a glass jar, some recycled paper and a bit of blue dryer lint, I tore the paper into fairly small pieces and added the lint and hot water. While it soaked, I did steps 1-3 below. The dark blob on the left side of the jar is the lint.

Step 1: Cut a sheet of perforated plastic canvas into rectangles 2.5"x3.5", and attaching two pieces of wire to the short sides of one, leaving the second rectangle alone.

Step 2: Using the LID half of a plastic box designed for trading cards, this made my "deckle" and the plastic canvas pieces became the screens.

Step 3: Removing the screen from the box, I added a small amount of water and white glue, then replaced the handled screen. Please note: the picture shows the water in the bottom of the box, not the lid. This was an error; with the handles, the screen doesn't fit flat like it does in the lid.

I used an immersion blender (stick blender) to blend the paper and lint. I ran into a bit of a snag, because the dryer lint also had dog hair and Wendy hair, which clogged the blades of the blender. Once I cleaned it out, it worked fine.

Step 4: Using a measuring scoop, I dropped around a 1/3 cup of my paper pulp into the box on top of the handled screen. I added the pulp gradually, because I didn't know how much it would need, so the scoop in the picture isn't full.

Step 5: The box on the left shows the top screen pressed in place. The box on the right shows the pulp swimming on top of the handled screen.

Step 6: Carefully lifting out the screens, I squeezed out the extra water over the box, and set the screen to the side while I did that with the other box.

Step 7: I put the two screens with their pulpy filling onto a washcloth folded in half, then folded then pressed the free end of the cloth firmly onto the screens.
Step 8: After blotting the worst of the water out of the screen sandwich, I peeled the top screen off s-l-o-w-l-y, starting with one corner. Then I pressed the handled screen pulp-side-down onto a dry paper towel on newspaper to blot again.

Step 9: I then carefully peeled the handled screen off of the much-dryer pulp (below) and set it on glossy newspaper ads to dry a bit.

Step 10: On the left, you see what I ended up with after Step 9. The one on the right is what the paper looks like mostly dry, after I had a go with the hairdryer.
I'm so excited that this worked! Of course, I got way carried away with the blue paper, and now have much pulp to process. Eh! Live and learn!

Handmade Paper ATCs... Maybe

My brain is burning. I have all this multicolored dryer lint, and recalled reading about making paper with it. So I thought, sure, save the lint, make the screen, recycle the junk mail - free paper! I have a roll of screen that I bought to replace a damaged window screen. It's in the garage... somewhere. Then I read that the aluminum screen is better for this (more rigid), and what I have is fiberglass. But what I really wanted to do was to make ATC-sized pieces of handmade paper, rather than cut apart a larger sheet, so I thought I could make a really small frame. As I said, burning brain.

I went to Michael's to price the Arnold Grummer kits and deckles. More than I want to spend on an experiment. So I went to Hobby Lobby to look. They don't carry the supplies for paper making, but the employee I asked was really helpful, made several great suggestions, and when I told her what I really wanted to do (the ATC-sized papers), she suggested I use screening and one of the plastic boxes used for trading cards. I thought maybe I could use plastic canvas as a press, so she led me to needleworking, and said she thought those holes would be too big - I agreed. But then I spied something we both thought would be perfect: perforated plastic canvas. It's just like perforated paper that's used in place of Aida cloth, but this is thin flexible plastic with very small holes in it. Mary then thought I could put some string in the holes on the edges, so I could lift out the plastic, rather than dumping it (and making a mess with the water). Between us, we had some bloody brilliant ideas for this! 

On the way home, I thought I wanted to try using an immersion blender rather than my freestanding one. Since I want to do small batches, this seems ideal. (Plus it means I don't have to sacrifice a blender for a craft project that may not pan out.) I'll post pictures of the process and whether it works with a finished piece as soon as I have one.