Coincidentally, similarly to Fergus on Green Living Forum I also started in mid January with Piptoporus betulinus, a wood eating polypore, found on birch. The 2 specimens I saved from the summer were already dry, but if you submerge to warm water for a short while it regains its structure and easy to chop up. One I simmered for an hour to test one of my first wool test swatches for its dye, the other was soaked only for the mentioned short while, but I did not find any difference in the end paper results.
I only had a pretty cheap onion blender, which was not willing to belnd the mushrooms in very small pieces, so I could not make a real thin sheet. I also did not manage to master the general method of collecting the puree from the water with a deckle, so at the end I pressed by finger the pieces on the deckle. My deckle is a simple tool used to prevent oil spillage over frying pans, but I hope to get once a real paper making deckle and see the difference. The best method seems to me for the newbies the one described at Green Living Forum, where you make a very finely chopped "cream" and spread it over evenly on the deckle.
Here is how mine interpretation of the process looked:
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After that I used old but clean kitchen towels to soak up the excess moisture, and put them to dry above the radiator for the night. Miriam Rice's book advised to hang them up to dry among sheets of towels, but I didnt see how that would keep the sheets straight. I should have seen it better...
I also lined a plastic tray used as packaging for groceries with the mushroom and set it aside in the tray. As a third step filled up some silicone cooking forms with the remaining material.
To my greatest horror by morning the sheets where completely curled up on top of the radiator. I had to rewater them and place back to dry. I even ironed them, which was actually not that bad idea as it sounds, so far you iron them through a table cloth or so, as it compacted them and gave them a smoother surface. After that I placed them among sheets of papers into some big and extremely boring text book, and finally they dried straight.
THE PAPER
The end result were 4 small sheets of slightly flexible, ca.1mm wide, cardboard like sheets, which were pretty easy to cut to form with scissors.
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As you may see it, the look resembles to corkboard and I think it could be indeed used for similar purposes. For use as cardboard alone might not be a good idea, as the sheets are rather brittle and would break easily. However, mixed with other, more flexible shrooms like Trametes versicolor would certainly give better results. Or one need to make a thicker sheet for a cardboard with increased strength.
THE PACKAGING
The tray was also okay, ca. 1.5-2 mm thick, though later deformed slightly in the middle. I think it could be used as packaging of certain specialty products where minimal liquid contact is expected (eg. whole pieces of organic apple, tray for beans, etc). Mass production is out of the picture, as fibrious mushrooms are typically polypores and they tend to develop rather slowly, but as a hobby activity may have a ground :).
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The other point, why it would not be a viable setup, as there is already a better and quicker method to make mushroom packaging. Ecocradle, the trademark of the already mentioned Ecocradle company cuts out some innecesary corners from the process: they do not start to nurture fruiting bodies from the mycelial mass, but they rather use directly the substrate overgrown by mycelium as packaging material and cardboard. This means they can use more material and spare weeks if not months from start till end product. Some of their interesting concepts can be found here.
THE DECORATIVE ITEMS
As the last element of this small "project", the little cooking forms also dried, and the results were some pretty bears and hearts. I plan to make some jewelery items like small balls for necklaces and similar next time and will play a little with the particle size to see the changes in the surface.
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