For a solid year of my life, I was expressly focused on making paper. But not just any paper. Experimental paper. I’d collect random things I found in thrift stores, or collect natural materials to use as additives in my paper.

And in doing so, I’ve made some interesting sheets. Like grass paper. Leaf paper. Coffee paper. Paper with tiny little flowers embedded in it.

I’ve done some weird things with paper. It’s been fun, and nearly all of my experiments have turned out well. Until now, that is.

And if I’m being objective and honest, I don’t suppose that this latest experimental batch was a failure, per se. I did successfully make sheets. However it didn’t exactly turn out how I envisioned it going in my head.

This time, I added colored sand into the sheets. Yep. You read that right. SAND. The stuff you walk on when you’re at the beach.

I was at Goodwill one day a few years ago when I came across a plastic bottle filled with blue and purple colored sand. This was during the time right after I discovered papermaking and had a huge appetite to just experiment and do anything with paper my mind could think of. I bought this bottle of colored sand for $3.99, transferred it into a glass container when I got home, and let it sit on my papermaking shelf for 3 years. It became one of the things on a long list of ideas to try.

Fast forward, it’s now spring 2023, nearly 3 years after I first started making paper and bought this bottle of sand. I had made a fairly large batch of pulp, too much for what I was really needing to do. Rather than continuing to make plain white sheets with the leftover pulp, or save the pulp for later, I decided why not finally give this sand paper idea a try?

Oh, silly me. Without really thinking it through, I dumped about half of the sand into the vat, agitated it as best I could, and started pulling sheets. Keep in mind, sand sinks. Sand is heavy. Sand does not mix well with water. Sand is messy.

That first sheet with sand was probably the heaviest sheet of paper I’ve ever made. The water took forever to drain out of the mould & deckle. Unsurprisingly (though surprising to me at the time given I had not thought this through), the sand sank to the bottom of the screen. So one side of the sheet was sprinkled quite nicely with sand flecks, while the other side was almost exclusively sand.

I continued onward nonetheless, agitating the vat quite aggressively before each sheet pull. After those initial sheets, the amount of sand lessened and the ratio between pulp and sand in the sheets evened out a bit.

I used up all of the sand and all of the pulp, and made about 20 sheets of sand paper. They all have varying thicknesses and each side of the sheet looks different due to the way sand sinks.

Drying the paper became my next challenge. Originally I was going to use my drybox, before I realized that the sand flecks were bound to get stuck in the drybox and could contaminate future batches. I resorted to hang drying the sheets, which worked well. Once they were fully dry, I stacked them up and pressed them in my book press for a solid few days to flatten them out.

The final sheets are neat, I will admit. The only issue with them from my standpoint is I don’t know what to do with them. They are so thick, to the point of not being able to use them as a cover for a book. If I were to try to fold one in half, it’s bound to crumble. They seem quite delicate, due to the way the sand interferes with the pulp drying—after all, it’s the pulp that gives the paper its strength. Not to mention the sand on the surface of the sheets is bound to flake off, leaving tiny pieces of sand wherever it’s being used. The last thing I want is to be constantly cleaning up sand.

So, would I do this again? Probably not. It was suggested to me that rather than adding the sand directly into the vat, perhaps there’s a different way it could be added to make the sand:pulp ratio balance a bit better and solve the sand sinking problem. But I don’t know how the process might change to make better sand paper.

If you have some ideas, let me know, I’d be curious to hear them. Same goes for what I might do with this paper. For now, it’s going to hang out in the studio until I muster up the nerve and patience to use it in something!