Starry starry spuds
The trusty potato is a staple in many kitchens: affordable, reliable and versatile it’s featured widely in recipes and meals, and is often a family favourite.
Brown, bulbous and plain, this trustworthy veggie isn’t glam and comes from suitably humble beginnings. It’s actually a starchy root vegetable that emanates from the Americas but has travelled the globe, morphing into thousands of varieties. I like its French name ‘pomme de terre’ which translates poetically to ‘the apple of the earth’.
You’ll always find a bag of pomme de terre at my house, and while I carefully store them in the cool dark cupboard under the sink, there’s often the odd spud that decides to ‘go rogue’ and throw out a few shoots or look a bit ragged as time passes.
We’re lucky to have chickens plus a good compost system, so food waste isn’t an issue for my household - most of our food scraps go on to be put to good use. I do however like to intercept a sad old potato on its way to the veggie patch and use it for a spot of crafting, especially at this time of year.
Potato Printing
This is one of the easiest and cheapest crafts you can do with your little ones. By adding a festive spin and using some themed colours or shapes you can use this very simple process to create some unique wrapping paper in time for the silly season. It’s also perfect for stamping cards and tags, and even looks good on paintings that have arrived home from creche or kinder.
The process uses very basic printmaking theory - the smooth washable flat surface of a cut potato is used as a printing plate to transfer paint onto another surface. What makes it extra fun is that it’s easy to get creative and cut all sorts of simple shapes from the potato.
At this time of year you might like to explore some Christmassy shapes like stars, baubles, berries and bells. This is a fun activity to do together: the cutting is clearly a job for grown ups, but kids will really enjoy the stamping.
You’ll need.
a couple of old spuds
a flat knife (smooth not serrated)
a sharp knife (for cutting finer shapes)
paper towel
washable paint (I’ve used cheap acrylic in tubes)
a palette (a plastic lid or paper plate is fine)
a paintbrush
paper (I’ve printed onto used brown paper wrapping)
Slice a potato in half, and pat the flat surfaces with paper towel to dry off any moisture.
Squeeze a small blob of paint onto the palette and spread it slightly with paintbrush . Place the potato’s cut side down into paint. Move it around until flat surface is covered.
Lift with fingers and then press flat side down to stamp the paper.
Carefully lift off, and you will have stamped an oval shape.
Repeat, reloading paint as necessary.
You can develop this technique further by making a star shape. Simply cut away triangles from the edge of the potato to leave behind a star shape. Don’t stress about precise angles… wonky is cute!
Add paint to the cut surface.
Repetition makes great patterns.
It’s easy to cut a star shape. What other shapes can you make?
Just two or three colours works well.
