Never buy printed papers again
A warm letter about making your own painted papers — and finding more uses for them than you'd expect.
Dear friend,
Have you ever stood in a craft shop holding a pack of printed papers, doing the quiet maths in your head — and bought them anyway, because the alternative felt too uncertain? I know that feeling well. The blank page, the open tub of paint, the not-quite-knowing where to start.
This tutorial came out of years of making painty papers — and out of wanting to share the exact things that made the process click for me. Not just the techniques, but the small decisions: how to choose a palette without pulling out every colour you own, which tool to reach for first, when a piece is finished and when you're just fussing. The kind of knowledge that doesn't come on the back of a paint tube.
What surprised me, making this, was how much of it comes down to a few simple principles — contrast, sequence, not zooming in too close. Once those settle in, the papers start to feel less like experiments and more like something you made on purpose. And then you find yourself looking at a brush you're about to rinse clean and thinking: wait, that's a background right there.
If you'd like to make a stack of your own — and see what to do with them once you have — here's the whole thing, start to finish.
Never Buy Printed Papers Again!
What you'll make
painted paper·cover
What you'll learn
scrap buster·doodling·mark making·painting·scratching·stamping
What you'll need
cling wrap·glue·gold paint·paint·plastic bags·straw
That thought has rescued more sessions than I can count. A piece that feels like a failure at arm's length almost always has something good in it — a corner, a strip, a small square of texture worth keeping. The further you get into making painty papers, the more you start to see the potential in everything. I hope this one gives you a whole stack to work with.
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