Entry No. 18 — the Buffalo file — filed under: papermaking
Papercraft Miracles
Janna Willoughby-Lohr has been turning nearly everything into paper since 2013 — wedding flowers, invasive daylilies pulled from Buffalo's Olmsted parks, pulp in every color — out of a solar-powered studio on Niagara Street. Her monthly in-person workshops rotate through pulp-pouring papermaking ($75), pamphlet-stitch journal binding ($40), and crepe-paper dahlias and anemones, alongside a retail line of hand-bound books and seed bombs that sprout when planted; her crew once produced 500,000 of those for a Lowe's giveaway. She is also a performing poet, rapper, and musician who competed on discovery+'s Meet Your Makers Showdown, which goes some way toward explaining the studio's refusal to be boring.
→ Three more hands-on workshops & classes in Buffalo — never the same twice
The story
Janna Willoughby-Lohr started Papercraft Miracles in 2013 and runs it now out of a solar-powered studio at 1888 Niagara Street. The premise is that paper is a material, not a surface: the studio pulps plant matter and casts it into sheets, embeds botanicals in the stock, hand-binds books, folds crepe paper into anemones and dahlias and full bouquets, and presses seed bombs and plantable paper that sprout when you bury them. A large share of the work is weddings - invitations, guest books, boutonnieres, centerpieces, flower walls that never wilt.
The team is all women: studio assistants Sydney Strano and Lorrie Mattar, Ruby Merritt - a BFA/MFA artist working in eco-art - and Becky Goldberg-Petty, an educator and artist with a theatrical production background. Willoughby-Lohr's shelf is crowded for a paper studio: a $25,000 Ignite Buffalo grant in 2018, Stationery Trends' 40-Under-40 in 2019, Business First's Women in Manufacturing award in 2023, the She Means Business pitch competition in 2024, and NAWBO Top 10 Women Business Owner of the Year in both 2021 and 2025. She is also a poet, rapper and musician, and competed on discovery+'s Meet Your Makers Showdown.
The civic streak shows up in what gets pulped. In July 2024 she ran a free six-hour papermaking session at Martin Luther King Jr. Park's Monument Plaza during the East Side Garden Walk, using invasive daylilies pulled out of Buffalo's Olmsted parks as the raw stock; visitors formed sheets out of weeds, and the sheets went back to the studio to be pressed, dried, and either collected or mailed. The monthly in-studio workshops run the same logic at smaller scale - pulp-pouring papermaking ($75), pamphlet-stitch journal binding ($40), beginners' crepe-paper dahlias and anemones ($60), seasonal bouquets ($75).
What it's like
This is a working production floor, not a shop with a bell over the door: you book a dated seat online and turn up to a studio that was filling somebody's wedding order that morning. Wear what you'd wear to paint a room. Pulp pouring means standing over vats, flooding pigmented slurry across screens, and pressing petals and seeds into wet sheets by hand, and it goes everywhere. Journal binding is the dry option, and you leave holding a finished book. Papermaking pays off more slowly - wet sheets need pressing and drying before they can travel, and at her park workshops the finished paper stayed behind for pickup or mailing, so ask when you book. Otherwise it's low-ceremony: arrive on time, ask what's in the pulp that day, and leave a minute for the shelves on the way out.
The move: Book two seats at the next Papermaking: Pulp Pouring session ($75 a head), spend the evening flooding pigmented pulp across screens and pressing in petals, then get dinner down Niagara Street while your sheets stay behind to be pressed and dried.
📍 Before you go Not a walk-in shop: workshops are scheduled monthly and booked through the website, and studio visits otherwise run by appointment. Papermaking is wet work — dress for splashes. Workshop seats run $40–$75.
- 📍 Buffalo
- 💸 $$
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Indoors
Where: 1888 Niagara St, Buffalo, NY 14207
Hours: Added 2026-08-25 — confirm current hours before you go.
⚠ Seasonal or scheduled — always check before you go.
Pair it with
- Buffalo Maritime Center — The boatshop at 90 Arthur Street is under a mile away in the same ZIP code, and it's the identical impulse at forty times the scale - volunteers hand-building a 38-foot warship replica instead of a sheet of paper.
- Western New York Book Arts Center — Make the paper on Niagara Street, then drive four miles downtown and print on it: WNYBAC's letterpress and bookbinding workshops are the obvious next chapter.
- The Foundry — The loud version of the same idea, three miles east - woodshop, metalshop and textile lab in an old Northampton Street factory, for anyone who wants sparks rather than slurry.
More weird in Buffalo
Good to know
Can I just walk in and browse?
No. It's a production studio rather than a storefront: in-person workshops run on a monthly schedule and are booked through papercraftmiracles.com, and anything else is by arrangement - the studio line is 1-855-472-7375.
What do the classes cost?
$40 for pamphlet-stitch journal making, $60 for the beginners' crepe-paper dahlia or anemone class, and $75 for pulp-pouring papermaking or the fall rose bouquet session. One-on-one business strategy sessions start at $175.
Do I need any experience?
No. The crepe-paper flower classes are billed for beginners outright, and pulp pouring is a first-timer's craft - the technique is pouring colored slurry onto a screen, and the studio supplies the pulp, the screens and the tools.
Can I book it for a group or a team?
Yes - alongside the public calendar the studio does private workshops and corporate team-building sessions, but those are arranged by contacting them directly rather than booked through the public workshop listings.
What if I can't get to Buffalo?
There are self-paced online courses - crepe-paper wild roses, coral charm peonies and sunflowers - priced $35-$50 for personal use and $50-$75 with a commercial license, plus a business masterclass for makers.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: Official site · bfloparks.org
last checked: 2026-08-25