Christmas potato printing wrapping paper using paint and brushes

Christmas season one-off lesson where students create their own repeat pattern wallpaper using potato printing. This version has instructions using water-based paints (acrylic gives a good opaque colour, but you can use poster paint too) and paint brushes, rather than printing ink and rollers (there is another version of this resource in my shop with instructions for this kind of printing).

A fun lesson with good cross-curricular links to design and technology and maths (repeat patterns, rotation).

The lesson requires some largish paper to print the wrapping paper - you can use what you have for this... brown craft paper works well; newsprint is cheap and good; sugar paper tends to be a bit thick but has the added benefit of colour and can look good in a display; tissue paper also works but can tear more easily.

Although this is a practical lesson, mess is kept to a minimum by using paper plates as palettes which can be thrown away after use. A good tip is to have some cheap wet wipes to help speed up the clean up at the end.

If you want to simplify things (perhaps for younger students) you can prepare potato stamps in advance to avoid having students cutting them in the lesson.