BANGOR – Maryann Ingalls is a self-described scavenger.

“Paper,” she said. “Everything but newspaper.”

Her cellar contains bags of paper, sorted according to color, which she has collected. Her studio off the kitchen of her home is stacked with paper, too – gift-wrap paper, business stationery, thick paper, delicate paper, tissue paper and art paper, snippets of paper and big sheets of paper.

The scrap paper in the cellar, along with the plastic tubs and screens, is the prime ingredient for Ingalls’ passion – making paper by hand, a craft she has practiced for about five years.

Flotsam and jetsam Ingalls picks up along the beach also figure prominently in her handmade paper. The seashore treasures she is attracted to include shells, tiny pebbles, seaglass, seaweed, frayed fibers and netting from lobster traps. These materials Ingalls embeds into the softly tinted paper she makes, which gives her work a style that might have come from a mermaid’s dream, and a sealike quality a mermaid most likely would feel at home with.

“I have an affinity for the shore,” Ingalls said. “I always carry plastic bags with me” for gathering treasures.

Ingalls said she learned to make paper from Vera Trobisch of Bangor. The two women worked together to learn more about papermaking and to experiment with the craft. Together, they formed a small craft business, Paper Cycles. They market their work at craft fairs during the holiday season at the end of each year.

Ingalls said her favorite craft venue is the Designing Woman craft show because at that show she is “surrounded by incredibly talented women.”

Ingalls also loves flowers, and some of the paper she creates is a gardener’s delight. She uses sweet fern, geranium petals – “because the color bleeds well” into the paper – rhubarb, elm seed, lilac or other flower petals and parts that pique her interest for their texture, design and color.

Ingalls is a self-confessed scavenger of ideas, too. Although she is mostly self-taught in the art of making paper and creating books and cards from her handmade products, she has taken classes in beading, calligraphy, quilting, stamping, origami, modular origami and embossing. She also has taken craft classes at the Yard Goods Center in Waterville. The classes spark her imagination and give her new ideas.

Ingalls took a book arts class at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle and honed her passion for making books, utilizing her handmade paper on the book covers.

“I love books,” she said. “I love to write and I am fascinated with paper. But I feel no need to fill up my blank books with my own writing and art.”

One of her favorite books on making and binding books is “Sleight of Binding,” by Cherryl Moote.

Ingalls’ handmade books range from the traditional with hard covers with stab stitch bindings to tiny, intricately folded entities she calls “spiritual house books,” which contain little images cut from paper, reflecting what is spiritually important to the maker of the book.

Her personal spiritual house book contains images of the ocean and the seashore. Making books and paper, she said, is frequently an exercise in spiritual practice.

Occasionally Ingalls, who has a degree in theological studies from Bangor Theological Seminary, conducts spiritual retreats.

“I enjoy learning new things with other people,” she said.This year, Ingalls sold about 300 handmade cards and 50 handmade books. Her goal is to find a greater commercial outlet for her work. She also wants to make bigger sheets of paper and to try her hand at papier-mache sculpture.

To learn about Ingalls’ work, call her at 990-2430.