It seems like such a darn shame to just toss some things away. With just a little bit of imagination and resourcefulness, you can turn something as humdrum as clothes dryer lint into a DIY art project that you and your friends will view with awe.  

Let me introduce you to a fun arts and crafts project — handmade paper. Besides the clothes dryer lint, you can recycle a page of this newspaper after everyone has finished reading it. Tear it up into very small pieces and mix it in with the clothes dryer lint.

Next, go outdoors in search of those shelf fungi called turkey tails. I'd be insulting your intelligence if I was so uncaring as to launch into a discussion as to how this mushroom got that name.  

In a kitchen blender appliance, grind up the three previously described ingredients with a liberal dose of water. The next step in the process is to pour this slurry onto a horizontal piece of window screen. Press the water out, and then place that soggy handmade paper inside a sandwich of parchment paper. Weight it down with a stack of old books. Eventually, you can extract the paper and set it out into the hot sunshine to do the final removal of any residual moisture.

Greeting cards? Kitchen table placemats? Bookmarks? You be the judge of how you will use this handmade paper.

… and … who said you were not an artist?

Neil Garrison was the longtime naturalist at a central Oklahoma nature center. His email is atlatlgarrison@hotmail.com.