About Eco-Africa

Paper-making is a relatively new craft in Southern Africa. It developed as a cottage industry to help impoverished villagers, mainly women with young families to get by and feed their loved ones. The raw materials were readily available from wild plants and shrubs that grow free and plentifully around their villages and communities. Programs were set up to provide simple, basic equipment for grinding the fiber into pulp and then to form the resulting pulp into sheets. Drying of the sheets was (and often still is) carried out by hanging them out to dry, often alongside the family washing. The newly trained paper-makers are paid for every sheet they produce.

Janice Ashby, an award winning designer working in both Southern Africa and New York, discovered the paper while traveling, and soon started designing products for the US. Eco Africa USA was formed in NY. "As an artist involved with designing paper-craft products, I found the African papers stunningly beautiful and quite different from anything previously on the market. Their rich, fibrous, powerfully tactile characteristics make them irresistible to work with. I also found that working with disadvantaged communities ... was extraordinarily rewarding. The artisans' enthusiasm for paper-making and paper-crafting is infectious, and the benefits that result are visible and dramatic".

Recently, Eco Africa has embraced scrapbooking. With more than eighty exciting natural paper styles and the extended range of imaginative decorative embellishments, it is a natural progression.

Read more here: http://ecoafrica-usa.net/stories.htm

Eco-Africa Scrapbooking Kit

Embellishments, pages, framing ideas, stencils and more. Handmade, eco-friendly papers and natural objects come from Zimbabwe and support people and planet. Each kit is unique, choose from several color or subject themes. Each package comes with detailed product information and scrapbooking/card making ideas for hours of fun and awesome looking photo books and more. Made In: Zimbabwe Made By: Eco-Africa Stock No: OFAKITS

Price: $22.00