Easy Handmade Seed Paper for a Mother’s Day Card

Easy Handmade Seed Paper for a Mother’s Day Card. This DIY is so easy you can do it with children. Perfect for no-school days or home-schooling!

Easy Handmade Seed Paper DIY

There are many ways to make paper, and a lot of ways include the mess of soaking pieces of paper in a bowl of water, chewing the pulp up in a blender, then using screens to squeeze it dry as smooth as possible.

Our method is probably the most unconventional way you’ve heard about, using a product that makes it so simple you’ll wish you had thought of it long ago.

Toilet paper.

Yes, that stuff.

Not easy to find at the time this post was first written. A more precious commodity than we would have ever dreamed possible.

Yet not expensive when you do get it.

I don’t want to encourage anyone to waste resources though, so you may want to save this project for non-pandemic days.

What You Need

1. Seeds. If you choose seeds that shouldn’t be planted in a clump, tear the paper and scatter the pieces around when you plant the paper.  Seeds that can be planted in clumps include lettuce, spinach, collards and some herbs, like cilantro, basil and peppermint. My favorite choice is wildflower seeds.
2. Toilet Paper. If you’re concerned about adding chemicals into your soil, choose an eco-friendly roll of paper. The best choice is Great Northern EcoComfort, according to citrussleep.com. It’s the most organic for reasonably priced paper. For a while, during covid, TP was hard to find. But now you should be able to find eco-safe paper quite easily.
3. Spray bottle with water. Add liquid starch if you want printable paper.
4. Cookie Sheet and plastic wrap. An old window screen if you have it.
5. Rags and a thin cotton T-towel. Rolling pin.
6. Stamps and non-toxic stamp pad or paints or markers. Instructables.com suggests adding liquid starch to the water in your spray bottle to help the inks or paints stay on the surface of the finished paper. Otherwise, too much ink soaks into the fibers and you don’t get a legible design.
7. Optional:  Essential oils to create scented paper, which makes it even more special as a Mother’s Day gift or card. If you give lavender seeds, scent it with lavender oil.

How to Do It

1. Line the cookie sheet with plastic wrap. Place a layer of toilet paper in the cookie sheet. Spray with water, scatter with seeds. Repeat this 3 times, then end with a 4th layer of TP. Spray good and wet, but not so it dissolves the paper. If you want scented paper, add a few drops of essential oil to your spray bottle. We blobbed some colors onto the wet paper with water base markers. The effect was nice, but for some reason, our seeds didn’t show through when the paper was dry.
2. Spread a layer of plastic wrap over the paper, then the thin cotton T-towel. Gently roll the paper with the rolling pin, squeezing the excess water to the sides. Sop up with rags. Remove the towel and plastic wrap. This is where you use the screen if you have one. It speeds up the drying process. Place it over the cookie sheet and flip the paper onto the screen. Carefully remove the pan and plastic wrap so the wet paper doesn’t stick to the plastic. Set the screen up on pieces of wood or plastic containers on each corner so it’s raised from the table surface.
3. Let dry overnight. Since you began with a relatively flat surface your paper will dry almost flat. But it won’t be smooth. This gives it that lovely homemade look.

And that’s all.

It’s just that easy to make seed paper

without a lot of mess

and buying tools you might never use again.

Now decide what you’ll do with the paper…

Decorate the Handmade Seed Paper

There’s some fun things you can do with your handmade seed paper.

You can cut it into shapes, such as a heart for a valentine’s card.

Trace around an animal cookie cutter, then punch a hole in the top and add string to use as a a gift card or ornament.

Add the shape to a card for a birthday, or, with scented paper, for a Mother’s Day card.

Cut the paper into smaller squares or rectangles and tie into a bundle with twine or ribbon. This can be a part of the Mother’s Day or girlfriend’s gift itself.

On the other hand, you can keep it and plant your own garden!

WHAT WE’D DO DIFFERENT NEXT TIME:

I’d spray with starch on each layer, or add liquid starch to the water in the spray bottle. The paper layers did not adhere well when it was dry. I ended up having to add watery glue to the edges of my cut designs so they would stay together. Perhaps having the original toilet paper wetter would have helped. I was afraid it would dissolve if I made it too wet, but I’m afraid we erred on the side of caution.

If you try this, please let us know if it worked for you or what you tried to get a better result.

Have fun making seed paper.
And planting it in your garden!