Busy Bee was a brief that I wrote
myself for my final major project at university in my final year. I’ve posted
about this on Instagram and on its on my website too. I decided to tackle the issue of
helping honey bees in the UK and growing more flowers.
From my website: ‘Busy Bee is a
campaign to encourage busy commuters to grow flowers on their daily commute to
help the honey bee population. The handmade paper made from recycled train
tickets and specially chosen seeds for honey bees was transformed into coffee
cup wraps, posters and an information booklet; all of which can be grown. All
products were screen printed and would use environmentally friendly ink.
The campaign would rely on
commuters handing in their old train tickets to coffee shops that supported
Busy Bee and would in turn get a coffee cup wrap. The website design for mobile
would allow users to locate the nearest coffee shop.’
More about the background and
research for this project can be found on my website here.
The paper making process
I’m a hoarder. I hoard things.
Things I don’t want to throw away, things people have given me, things I have
picked up when I’ve gone somewhere, nice things, old receipts and tickets,
scrap bits of paper I can't bare throw away ect. So I have a whole bag for
life of paper from my 3 years at uni that I thought might come in use one day.
And I made sure I was going to use it, especially for this project. I’ve always
been intrigued by paper making since I created the Upcycle project at college
and wanted to create some of my own. I remember one summer 3-4 years ago I spent
ages going from shop to shop trying to find mesh to make a frame that my dad
said he would help put together but I had no luck finding the correct mesh I needed.
Until later on, I gave up and bought an A5 mesh from ebay. And its been
perfectly fine (no idea why I didn't do that first). The only problem I found was joining the sheets together to
make A4 or A3 sheets of paper.
Here are pictures from the
process. Not all of the photos are form the same batch and some are from
different days. I really didn't want to get water or paper pulp on my camera!
Last December I collect a whole loads of petals from flowers we were about to throw away. Dried them out and kept them in plastic bags. This is a picture of some of them in the blender.
I don’t have correct measurements
of how much water I added, or starch, or seeds or the amount paper. I did them
all in the different batches, added them to a tub and added extra water if
needed. Here is a picture of all the train tickets I added to the mixture. I
blended until only for a few seconds, if the water is warm it breaks the paper
down quicker and you don’t want the paper to be too fine else it will pass
through the mesh. 
I added at least 3 batches of
paper and water to a tub and added extra water if the mixture was too thick.
Once I had the right consistency, I added starch and seeds. I had chosen
specific seeds to attract bees so that it related to purpose of my project. The
starch makes the paper stronger and this is exactly what I needed as I was
going to make booklets, coffee cup wraps and posters.
I then dipped the frame into the
water, slowly lifted it up and let the water drain on the side. I then pressed
the pulp down with a sponge until most of the water was gone and carefully
place the pulp square onto plastic and cardboard to dry.
It took at least 2-3 days to dry
properly.
I have some spare paper left so I
will test this outdoors over the summer. The small plant pot I tests out a
sample of died within a few days, simple because I don’t have much sunlight in
my room and where my window is positioned.
