Paper making, of a sort

Raw materials - cotton linters. To which I wanted to add mica flakes and black dye.

Painting the dye onto wet paper -

Not a good result! When ironed dry (I was in a hurry to see what would happen), the procion dye went into the j-cloth, and also into the newspaper on which I was ironing ... and not all that much stayed in the paper -

Same thing with the one that was left to dry naturally (3rd from left). The others are the result of adding dye to the water - which made it impossible to see the pulp in the water, and diluted the dye too much. And my rubber gloves leaked. The grey shades are definitely suitable for November -

Sprinkling the mica flakes onto the paper before compressing it sort of worked - quite a few have fallen off, but most are still there.

Perhaps the way forward for making black paper is to dye the already-made paper. Or to dye the cotton linters, and treat them with synthrapol before pulping them.