What can you create from paper?

Does the autumn make you feel crafty? Maybe it's the idea of knitwear, Thanksgiving, Halloween and even the lead up to the Christmas holidays that makes us get creative and want to pull out some paper and scissors.

If you prefer to create your own designs, you can use a quality blank sheet and stamps. Either use coloured ink or colour in images with pencils, markers or watercolours. Customized papers like these make great wrapping paper or you can use them to make your own gift bags. Just add tissue and a pretty ribbon and you're set!

As a gift for yourself, use paper to cover a book or storage box. Or, insert a little whimsy into your day by lining a drawer, shelf or inside cupboard with a beautiful decorative paper to spark some joy. Use it to line or cover a tin or jar and make yourself a pen, brush, or cutlery holder - or apply the same technique to revitalize an old vase.

Since papers are lightweight, inexpensive and versatile, you can switch them up for different seasons and holidays, easily giving your space a fresh, new and festive look.

For Thanksgiving and Halloween, consider making paper leaves or other cutouts to hang. For example, bats and crows can be dangled from string in doorways, windows or from branches. Or cutout some cats, a full moon, pumpkins, etc. and tape them to your window to appear in the evening against the interior glow of light inside.

You can also use paper and a good pair of scissors to fashion yourself a Halloween costume, such as a calendar (we did this one year - affix pages to a cardboard box with head and arm-holes, and dangle a pencil from a string). Or create paper accessories, such as a mask, crown, fan, or wand-topper.