• Projects

    Using Decorative Papers

    If  over time, you find you or the kids have created a whole stack of decorative paper, it can be a problem what do you do with it all. Personally I find it really therapeutic to create decorative paper – there’s no (entirely self-inflicted) pressure to perform, and quite often when I’m creating it, I have no end purpose it mind, so they just get added to the collection, then when the time comes that I need some, the resources are there, ready and waiting. Of course the range of uses for these is endless, and you could just as well use commercial papers if you don’t have any of…

  • creative sketchbooks
    Art Materials

    Choosing the Perfect Sketch Book

    Sketch books come in many sizes and shapes – the sheer choice out there can sometimes be bewildering, but at the end of the day, what is a sketchbook? At its simplest level, it’s just a plain paper book – so what’s all the fuss about, surely one sketch book is as good as the next? As a lifelong enthusiast for gorgeous sketchbooks, this is a subject on which I could write at length. Don’t worry, I don’t plan to do that here, since I suspect for anyone other than fellow enthusiasts it would be extremely boring, but I thought it might be helpful to outline some of the factors…

  • Nature,  Projects

    Botanical Papers – Part 1

    This project uses a humble office scanner and foraged natural materials to produce simple decorative papers with a wide range of uses. As regular readers of Artful Adventures will know, one of my favourite creative tools is our home scanner. I love the way it is simple to use, and creates images which are somehow both 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional at the same time. This project is one of those which started off with us all experimenting with the effects we could get using natural materials on the scanner, as indeed we have in the past, but ended up with me continuing alone, to push some of those ideas further. This…