When Sandy Bernat demonstrated how to “pull” a sheet of paper in her West Tisbury studio, it looked like a magic trick. Somehow, by dipping her mold into pulp, shaking off the excess water and flipping it onto a piece of damp felt, the diluted fibers stuck together to form paper.

Mrs. Bernat has been making paper since the mid 1980s. She first became interested in it when she was a middle school teacher. “I think that visual communication is just so important in education,” she said. So she had her students make altered books as one of their projects. They combined visual art, including handmade paper, and writing.

For herself, papermaking also is a way to get in touch with tradition, craft and the natural world.

The natural world is where she began a recent papermaking class — one focussed on incorporating seaweed into handmade paper, one of several offerings at Mrs. Bernat’s up-Island business, Seastone Papers. We spent the first part of this class at the beach, wading in the water to find seaweed we wanted to use.

The seaweed available changes all the time, so each time you include some in paper, it gives you a different palette in terms of color and texture, Mrs. Bernat explained.

When the class got back to the studio, the first thing to do was to wash our seaweed. We had to get all the dirt, salt and little sea creatures out of it before we could use it in paper. Then, we had to learn how to make a sheet of paper.

The five of us students gathered around a vat of white-colored pulp: a pigmented mixture of cotton and abaca fibers. We watched intently as Mrs. Bernat showed us how to use the molds, do the “vat-man shake” to get rid of some of the water, and “couch” it (press the back of the mold with your fingertips). All this to achieve an even sheet.

We got started right away, pulling sheets of different colors and decorating them with seaweed, pulp paint and shaped molds such as circles, fish and stars. We were encouraged to experiment with different ways of “laminating,” which is putting pulp or seaweed on top of the paper, and “inclusion,” which is making a hole in the paper and covering it with seaweed, to achieve a kind of see-through effect.

Towards the end of the four-hour session, it was time to clean up and get our paper ready to dry. We put it briefly in a press to squeeze out surplus water, and then transferred it into a dry box where it would stay a day or two to completely dry out. As we lifted the sheets from the felt into the dry box, two things amazed us: the strength and resilience of the thin paper, and how differently everyone’s turned out.

“It’s really interesting how you can see everyone’s voice coming out in these,” said participant Jean Hay.

Mrs. Bernat has traveled widely, to places such as Burma (Myanmar) and Tibet, to explore the history of her craft. She runs classes specifically for art teachers, and her daughter Larissa runs summer classes for children.

Year-round Mrs. Bernat teaches to anyone who would like to try the craft. Upcoming workshops include denim paper, Japanese bookbinding, alternative structures in the concertina book, forming paper and decorative paper.

Mrs. Bernat makes books of all sizes, journals, and even some sculptures using different fibers and techniques of papermaking. After the class she showed us some of her pieces. She also shows her paper work in exhibitions at the Shaw Cramer Gallery, Featherstone Center for the Arts and elsewhere.

For details on classes or exhibitions, see seastonepapers.com or call 508-693-5786.