I bought a couple of hardback books from the charity shop and up-cycled them into handmade books filled with watercolour paper, and covered them with unique printed paper using my gel plate.

My go-to watercolour sketchbook is the Hahnemühle 200gsm cold pressed paper with a fine texture, which is the ideal weight of paper for ink and wash. It comes with a grey cover, so added a bit of personality to my May 2026 books with some handprinted abstract paper I created with my Gelli Arts plate.