snowman and spruce home-made potato print wrapping paper

A terminal dose of miserable self pity has prevented me making the cards I had planned on making but I did make my own wrapping paper. These were made with good old fashioned brown parcel paper - the stuff you'd use to patch up the head of a Jack who's just broke his crown falling down the hill - potatoes and some kind of gouachey paint - but not the gouache watercolours I normally use. It's part of an ancient yorkshire custom (I don't live in yorkshire now but spent much of my life there and am a naturalised yorkshireman ) known as 'spending as little money as possible'. This tradition goes back to antiquity and has often caused the word yorkshireman to be uttered in the same sentence as 'tightarse' and 'short arms and deep pockets'.

Done