There are many different art projects that require beautiful paper. Why not create these papers and use them in future art projects?

You will need a large space to make these floating chalk prints, and lots of space to dry your artwork flat.

To make your own floating chalk prints you’ll need:

• Some chalk pastels or regular chalk.
• Some paper
• A shallow tub that the paper fits in filled with around a centimetre or two of water.
• Something to scrap the chalk – we used plastic knives.

Make sure that the paper you choose can fit inside the tub of water you are using, if not, cut the paper so that it can fit in the tub.
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Fill your tub with water, it doesn’t need to be completely full, just enough to cover the bottom of the tub. If you are having trouble with your chalk flakes sinking, try mixing a small amount of dishwashing detergent into the water to help the flakes float better.
Choose a chalk and carefully but firmly scrape chalk onto the surface of the water. You can use a plastic knife to scrape down the sides of our chalk pastels which works really well. You could try a variety of different tools for scraping to see which ones work best, but you are looking for something that makes a fine dust, not big flakes.
The coloured chalk dust should float on the top of the water, and you can add more layers of chalk dust in different colours. Don’t worry if a little chalk sinks to the bottom, as long as there is still lots floating on the top.
You can use a skewer or a chopstick to swirl and mix the colours if you like, but be quick and gentle, you want most of the chalk to stay floating on the surface of the water, if it gets too water logged it will sink.
Once you are happy with the amount of chalk floating on the water, take a piece of paper and gently place it onto the surface of the water. Use your finger tips to press the paper gently onto the top of the water.
After a minute or so gently lift the paper off the top of the water to reveal your beautiful floating chalk print!
The prints look magical!
The paper is covered in speckled, swirling, spots of colour, almost like old fashioned marbled paper!