Sometimes when you start out expecting one thing, you end up with something completely different.

That’s the lesson learned by Savage paper artist Kirsten Boehne when she sets out to create her one-of-a-kind sets of recycled papers.

“It's part of the art and part of the mystery of making paper that you never really know what you're going to get when you start out,” she said.

Boehne will offer live demonstrations of paper making at the Jordan Art Festival, June 21-22 along Water Street in downtown Jordan.

With almost every paper of that Boehne makes with her business KP Originals, the process begins with her experience. She starts by building on experience that she’s had in the past with papermaking.

The papermaking process begins, of course, with finding the right paper. Boehne’s paper products are made completely of 100 percent post-consumer paper that she recycles – everything from Costa Rican brochures and theater announcements to quilting cloth fragments and ribbons.

This year, for her demonstrations during the art festival, Boehne will be using recycled printed materials left over from last year’s festival.

“I've kind of pulled out what I think will be a good mix of the colors,” she said.

She takes the papers that she thinks will make a good, usually based on the colors of the paper or the color of the printing on the paper, and she mixes the paper fragments into pulp with water and an additive to reduce the pH level.

It’s this pulp that she’ll be bringing to the art festival.

From there, Boehne presses the pulp on a screen to remove the extra water, and then she takes the pressed paper and lets it dry. She’s tried adding texture to the paper by drying it on things like wood or bricks or stone, but she’s found that the paper dries best and smoothest on a window.

“When they're wet you can literally slap them up on your windows,” Boehne said.

And when the papers are dry, they peal right off and have a super-smooth glassy finish.

But Boehne isn’t just about slapping wet sheets of paper to a window – in fact, she’s not just about making only paper at all. Her paper art extends to creating books and bound collections of specialty paper, as well. And that’s another reason for the glassy-smooth finish – it makes the paper better for writing or using in any number of ways. That, to her, is part of her artistic process.

For the past several years, Boehne said, she’s had customers coming back to the art festival and telling her all the things they’ve used her paper and her books for.

“It makes me feel good that other people are using it in their own creative ways,” she said.

When Boehne looks at a finished sheet of paper or book, she knows that her part of the process isn’t the end for the paper – something not many other artists can say about their work.

“I know it's only part of the way in the creative process,” she said. “I want it to go farther.”

Whether that means her buyers use the paper themselves to do creative things, or they give it as a gift to someone else who will make good use of it.

“There's always somebody out there,” she said. “My books are intended just for that use. They're open to possibilities.”

But again, Boehne there’ s more to Boehne’s art than just paper. She also works with making handmade totes and several other projects. It’s part of her love of the artistic process that began at an early age.

Boehne didn’t have one of those artistic “ah-ha” moments when she realized she wanted to be an artist. To her, it’s always just been a sort of given in her life. Coming from what she calls an artsy crafty family, Boehne grew up doing art of all kinds.

“It just kind of evolved from there,” she said.