A week or two ago, I cooked day lily leaves to make pulp for day lily paper. If you haven't read the post, you should read it before reading this update.
Now that we are on the same page, here is the update.
This is what I had after the day lillies were completely cooked. Don't let the height of the cooked mixture in the pan fool you. It's mostly water, as you can see below.
Yep, you are seeing correctly. That's all the "pulp" I got from the cooked and cleaned lillies. Speaking of cleaning!! That entails washing the slimy lily leaves until they were no longer slimy. Good for everyone, as well as my camera that I didn't get pictures of that step. Take my word for it, cleaning the cooked leaves is probably the nastiest part of this process.
Now that we are on the same page, here is the update.
This is what I had after the day lillies were completely cooked. Don't let the height of the cooked mixture in the pan fool you. It's mostly water, as you can see below.
Yep, you are seeing correctly. That's all the "pulp" I got from the cooked and cleaned lillies. Speaking of cleaning!! That entails washing the slimy lily leaves until they were no longer slimy. Good for everyone, as well as my camera that I didn't get pictures of that step. Take my word for it, cleaning the cooked leaves is probably the nastiest part of this process.
I placed the pulp and water, along with some tissue paper for strength, in my 2nd hand store, retro, hmp dedicated, industrial strength blender. Sadly, that was all the pulp I had.
After all the work, I only got ONE page in the traditional manner, which is dipping my mould into the watery pulp. I had to pour the second and third pages. Pouring is hard for me, because I don't get an even pour, which means some areas of the paper had more pulp than others. The edges weren't as smooth, either. As you can see from the picture below, I only got two sheets from this batch.
The third page was a bust. It was too thin in most places, and only yeilded a small strip of paper, which I used on a page in my Asian AB.
As always, you may click on the pages for a larger view, although I can't see why anyone would want to see a larger view of my blender or a baggie :>)
After all the work, I only got ONE page in the traditional manner, which is dipping my mould into the watery pulp. I had to pour the second and third pages. Pouring is hard for me, because I don't get an even pour, which means some areas of the paper had more pulp than others. The edges weren't as smooth, either. As you can see from the picture below, I only got two sheets from this batch.
The third page was a bust. It was too thin in most places, and only yeilded a small strip of paper, which I used on a page in my Asian AB.
As always, you may click on the pages for a larger view, although I can't see why anyone would want to see a larger view of my blender or a baggie :>)
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4 thoughtful remarks:
Well even if you only got 2 pages of paper, it must feel good to know that you created something so unique. Charleen
That seems like a heck of a lot of work for 2 sheets of paper but I LOVE that colour and I am sure that there are many possibilites. I've made dye from plants before and not retained anywhere near as much colour as you have so I would think this is a good result, just not in quantity!
How fabulous. I have made paper from shop bought pulp (I can't get and even pour either) but I might have to try this with some of the day lilies I have in my garden. I've heard you can make paper from rhubarb stalks too. My attempts were not a success though.
WOW! I'm glad hove found your blog via Seth's buried treasure!!!
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