Selling pottery usually means deciding what to ship it in, and most options are plastic or foam. This build tackles that head on: the maker is forming custom molded paper pulp packaging out of shredded junk mail, made to hold their travel mugs. Since only a very small number of these mugs are being sold, the packaging was meant to be part of the project itself rather than an afterthought, and the maker wanted it to be biodegradable.
The process is laid out step by step. Shredded paper is weighed in a bucket on a digital scale, then soaked with a deep purple dye made by boiling wood shavings in water. A white slurry gets stirred and cooked down into a thickening paste, which is spooned onto the drained pulp and kneaded in by a gloved hand until the mixture is uniform. The wet pulp is packed into a 3D-printed mold shaped to cradle a tumbler, and once it sets and dries, the piece comes out of the mold.
The binder here is cornstarch, which keeps the whole thing biodegradable, and that seems like the right call for a project built around reuse. Logwood chips act as a natural dye, which I think is a lovely touch for packaging that could easily have stayed gray and dull. The finished insert is rigid and textured, and a cream-colored travel mug sits snugly in the molded cavity.
It is still a work in progress, so questions remain about how it holds up over time. Even so, turning a waste stream into something this considered is a great direction.