The author of Playing with Surface Design has very creative ideas using materials that I almost always already have in my house. I especially liked the ideas that centered around recycled items, like using bubble wrap and a fabric-safe ink pad to decorate a tea towel. My kids already made the scribble garland by coloring sticker labels with markers and stringing them together to make a fun (and easy!) decoration for their bedroom.

There’s some interesting projects for home decor, but also for embellishing jewelry and even shoes.
One of my favorite projects in Playing with Surface Design is the sand and sea notecards. I used an old credit card to apply seafoam acrylic paint to the blank, white cards. I love how it turned out and it’s just a really fun technique, too. The finished look is like a really lovely watercolor effect. There’s also a project that uses the same credit card technique but with wood that I can’t wait to try, now that I’ve tried it out with the notecards and it looks so nice.