Type in ‘how to make paper’ online and you’ll get all kinds of long-winded complicated how-to articles involving hours of paper tearing, procrastinating over which kinds of paper to use, and other technical jargon involving equipment you either don’t have or will probably only use several times. But what if you just want to make paper with no mucking about? Well, there is a way; it might take a bit longer to dry than the experts would be happy with, but it’s much less messing about and the results are excellent.

1) Tear up a load of newspaper and leave it in a basin full of warm water to soak. The smaller the pieces, the quicker it’ll become soft and malleable.

2) When the fibers start to become slushy, that’s when to take it out. Leave it too long and you run the risk of the pieces becoming too small, and they won’t so easily knit together.

3) Drain the majority of the water out of the paper, until they are quite wet but not sopping; then take a flat surface—such as a cutting mat or something similarly smooth, as this will determine the smoothness of one side of your paper—and chuck the paper on in handfuls. Don’t be precious about it. Knead it as thin or thick as you like, until it’s relatively flat (Don’t make it too thin, though, otherwise it will fall apart when you peel it off).

4) Now you must wait. In a house with central heating the paper will dry in a week or so. If it’s sunny outside—and quite hot—then the paper will dry, however thick, in a matter of hours. I usually put my sheets on the shed roof in the morning, and by mid-afternoon they are dry as a bone.

5) Carefully and patiently peel your paper off. Marvel at the results and how smooth it is and get drawing!

Nothing looks as classy or expensive as real gold leafed objects: the list of potential objects is endless; shells, picture frames, wine glasses, furniture, bed-posts (it will go nicely with your luxury bedding)—anything which has a smooth surface will take gold leaf well, whether it be made of glass, metal, wood or plastic.

You don’t necessarily have to go to an expert gilder to create a beautiful gift for that special person in your life. With a range of gold leaf available online—from low quality metal leaf which resembles gold leaf closely, to high end material which is slightly more delicate but even more impressive—anyone can have a dabble, and spectacular results can be obtained with very little training or research.

1) Firstly, you’ll need some cotton wool, gold leaf, gold leaf size (the special name for the proper glue) and your object. Gold leaf comes in either rolls or sheets. Rolls are much easier to handle and pressure sensitive; all you need do is apply the roll to the object when the glue is ready—this depends on the type you buy and varies from instant, four hours, or twelve hours—and rub its back. Leaves are trickier to handle, and not ideal for the beginner.

2) Don’t worry about over-lapping the gold. The gold will only stick where it is needed. No special technique is needed to make the gold shiny—it will take on the form of the object it adheres too: where the surface is smooth, the gold will be smooth too.

3) Brush away an excess gold. Be sure not to touch any sticky areas with your cotton wool, otherwise it will stick.

4) Finish by buffing the object up with a clean, smooth rag. Do so gently so as not to disturb the gold while it dries; then give it some time to dry. When you come back to it the next day, give it one last buff and there you have it!

1) Find something you like the look of: remember, the cabinet / chair / table doesn’t have to be a work of art, or anything close—it only needs to have potential and be fairly stable. With a few nails and wood filler in the cracks, almost anything will do.

2) Sand the object down—don’t take all day on this; it need only be enough to wear away any old varnish or polish and allow the stain to take hold on the wood.

3) Apply the wood stain: mahogany, walnut, dark oak etc—spirit based stuff is best. Use as much as you like, there can never be enough. If you see patches where the stain hasn’t taken hold, be sure to go over it again with sand-paper until it does.

4) Now is time to wax! Waxing a piece of furniture starts of hard, and gets easier with each layer; first, apply the wax fairly liberally and leave it for half an hour or so. When it goes dim it’s ready to polish. Now go over the wax fluidly, fast enough not to stall and drag the wax off the wood, but not so fast that you skim the surface. The first couple of layers will appear very dim, but after that the polish will harden and become more and glassier. Soon, with some patience, the object will be transformed. Your friends will be asking how much you paid for it! And now you just need the designer bedding to match!

Spring will soon be upon us and after that we have the lovely, long, hot Summer months to look forward to (well, we can all dream can’t we?) There is nothing better than relaxing in your garden with a can of something cold and a good book to read, or perhaps you like to have your friends and neighbours around for a barbecue? Well, don’t let that grotty fence around your garden ruin the atmosphere, it’s time to start planning how to make your fence help your garden look terrific!

It always surprises me how many people spend hour upon hour getting their garden to look immaculate and yet spend no time at all on the fence that surrounds it. Result: one potential paradise turned into an aesthetic car crash.

Fences are changing and so the way that you treat them needs to change as well. Fencing used to be invariably made from cheaper, rough sawn woods and fence treatments were designed to be used on these porous timbers. Increasingly, fences are now constructed from higher quality smooth-planed wood but this means that the timbers are much harder to penetrate. Always check your fence first to see if it is rough-sawn or smooth planed. If you can feel splinters when you run your hand along the surface then it is rough sawn, otherwise you must assume that it is a smooth-planed substrate.

If you have a smooth planed fence, fast becoming the norm for fencing, then you must check the fencing treatment that you are about to use before applying it. Many fence treatments are only suitable for rough sawn fences and will say so on the tin. If you apply one of these treatments to your fence it may look fine initially but when the rains come the fence paint will wash away. I see so many patchy looking fences and I always find that this has been the cause of it.

I have discovered a fantastic new product that I would recommend to you: Ronseal Woodland Trust Colours. The name is a bit of a mouthful but I have been very impressed with the results. It is suitable for both rough and smooth timbers and can be brushed or sprayed for ease of use. The best thing in my opinion is the range of colours available: rather than the boring old shades of brown that many treatments come in, Woodland Trust Colours are available in subtle, pastel-like shades of greens and blues and my personal favourite, White Ash.

For every tin sold, Ronseal give 25p to The Woodland Trust charity to protect our native woodland. A nice idea, and one that gives you even more reason to try the product. It’s a bit cold at the moment, as the air temperature needs to be above 10C before you can apply any fencing treatment but you can start planning now. Make sure that your fence is free from any algae or moss and remove any loose wood with a stiff brush. After that, just wait for the good weather to arrive and then your fencing can look as good as mine with a little help from The Woodland Trust. All we need now is a ‘Barbecue Summer’!

Italy ski holidays booking sorted all of you, I am really excited about our long weekend trip. I need part of the payment by Saturday.

I started to look at redoing my back garden, and actually all of the inspiration came from the shutters that I bought for my conservatory! They were pretty pricey but completely worth it, and now I am looking at building the deck to match them.

Decks can look fantastic if treated well but if left unattended they can quickly begin to look shabby, detracting from the appeal of your garden rather than adding to it. The grooves between decking boards can become a haven for algae and lichen and before long the deck can take on a mossy facade. The other danger with untreated decks is that UV damage from the sun will fade your deck to a tired, silvery-grey colour: this is why decking treatments need to have some pigmentation, to protect the wood in the same way that sun glasses protect your eyes!

Decks are predominantly tanalised when first bought: this is a pressure treatment that gives the deck a slight greenish tinge when new and is designed to offer an initial protection for the first few months. The waxes used in tanalising, however, can make it very hard for any decking treatment to penetrate into, or adhere to, the boards and this is why it is essential to scrub the deck thoroughly with a specialised Decking Cleaner before any treatment is undertaken. The decking cleaner breaks down the waxes and opens up the pores of the timber to make it more receptive to treatments. If a decking cleaner is not used then your treatment will quickly fade or lift away when adverse weather conditions arrive and this is a common yet costly error.

Once the deck has been cleaned then it is ready to treat. There is a bewildering array of decking treatments available for the DIY enthusiast and they each do subtly different things. Please remember that these decking treatments must be used individually, you cannot use one treatment in conjunction with another or they will react with each other and leave your deck looking terrible.

If you want to add a lot of colour to a deck then you need a Decking Stain. This product sits on top of the deck, colouring it rather like a subtle paint but it will flake away over time as it reaches the end of its effective working life.

Decking Oils will also colour the deck, but in more subtle wood colours and will give more of a matt, oiled effect. Whilst Decking Oil gives a very pleasing aesthetic it is not as long lasting as other decking products, often needing re-treament every six months or so.

Decking Protectors will not change the colour as such, although they will darken the wood to which they are applied because of the solvent (oil) content. Decking Protectors themselves have added waxes and so they are most resilient to rainfall.

As a decking expert myself, and an enthusiastic DIYer, I personally use Decking Protector and reapply it every Spring, using a Decking Cleaner every year before the Protector goes down. My deck looks great and if you follow my advice then I’m sure that yours will too!

Q) How cool would it be to have your very own arcade machine?

A) Incredibly cool! Your street cred would go through the roof and you’d have the ladies eating out of your hand! (Ok, this is maybe a slight exaggeration, but it would still be pretty cool to have your own.)

Well, if you do want one, there are two different routes to go down. The first of these is to just nip out and buy one for yourself. This is easy enough to do because there are several good suppliers online; but the downside to this is they are normally very expensive.

The other option you have is to make one. Now, don’t get into a panic, it really isn’t that tough. I would quite happily have a go at it; and if I could manage it then anyone can!

There is a handy link here (http://buildahomearcade.com/) that will show you exactly what to do. If you have an old computer then this is a brilliant way to give it a second life. It doesn’t even need to have a particularly good processor or graphics card. Whichever way it is you go about creating your own gaming unit you will need to look into ‘MAME’. This is a free program that effectively turns a PC into an arcade machine. Once you have this installed you will be able to play on hundreds of different classic games.

Have a look online at some of the machines that people have built. There are some really impressive ones that would look perfectly at home in any seaside amusement arcade.

Last thing before I go I think I should need to inform you all about the most bizarre art show that I went to in Clapham over the weekend, it was in substance a huge hall with loads of shutters in it. Very overpowering!

Before I begin I need to tell you all this or I will totally forget. This Enigin blog has some really awesome ideas for businesses who are concerned about thier environmental impact, and you should really give it your support and readership if you have a spare moment!

Now, onto sheds!

Trying to do woodwork in a shed that isn’t big enough can soon turn into a nightmare! When you are busy on a project it is important that you have adequate room to work.

Here are a few ideas that might help…

· You’ve Got Some Bottle!

If you get an empty two or four pint milk container which is clean and dry inside then it is a brilliant way of storing screws or nails. You can literally pour out what you want and it is easy to move around because of its handle! If you want to store larger nails in it that will be awkward to get out, then just cut out a hole on the opposite side to the handle.

· Make Your Mark.

Hang your tools from screws in the walls by all means but draw round each one with a marker pen. This way you will know exactly what goes where. This is also a very useful way of remembering that you leant something to someone and you are waiting to get it back…

· Know The Odds.

Rather than having a load of odds and sods lying around all over the place make an effort to put them all together in a certain box or tin. You will be surprised just how many ‘bits of things’ can be put in it out of the way.

· An Old Bag.

If you are anything like I am then you tend to leave bits of rag all over the place; then they just end up getting knocked on the floor and getting thrown away. This is so simple to solve! Just hang a carrier bag on the wall and put them all in there out of the way. You’ll know exactly where they are and your workspace will be a lot less cluttered.

A while ago a friend of mine was replacing the flooring in his bungalow. I am keen on woodwork so I asked him what he was doing with all of the old floorboards. They we still in good condition and I was pretty sure that I could make use of them. He told me that if I took them away I would actually be doing him a favour; he’d been planning to get a skip and just throw them all into that.

It turned out that there was a lot more wood than I expected, but this was okay because I am always making things in my spare time. When I got it all back to my house I stacked it up on some bearers in the back garden and sheeted it over for the winter.

When the weather improved I went out to the shed and got started on my first project; I had ideas for a few different things and had drawn up some plans already. Because the floorboards were tongue and groove I was able to slot them together and create good joints. The biggest (and most boring) job was to sand down each board before I used it, but they looked really nice when they were done.

I managed to build all kinds of different things from the stack of boards in my garden; a TV unit for the front room, a wardrobe, a small tool shed and a coffee table. Not bad going when you considering that all of this wood was just going to be thrown away!

So, if you are doing some work in your home and there is a lot of ‘waste wood’ have a think before you just get rid of it. If you can use it to make something then it will give you a tremendous amount of satisfaction.

Before I go, I think that all of those who are into this thought of a more planet friendly lifestyle really need to hit this link. This Enigin blog has some really innovative ideas for companies who are concerned about thier carbon footprint, I am really respecting them right now.

· Coffee Time.

Empty coffee jars are a brilliant way of storing nuts, bolts, screws, washers and anything similar. You can see exactly what is in each jar (as long as you have removed the labels!) and the contents will not get dusty. The only problem is that there is always the chance they will get knocked off of a shelf.

There is a good way round this. If you drill a couple of holes in each lid then you can screw them to the bottom of a shelf. They will hang there quite safely and you are using space that would normally remain empty.

· Roll Up!

Old tobacco tins are brilliant for storage because they stack up so neatly. They will hold a lot more than you think and if you label the end of each one you will be able to find things at a glance.

· Hanging out.

Old coat hooks are really useful for hanging up all kinds of things. Any lengths of hose or cable can be put up on the wall and you can also use them to store power tools. If they do not give you enough depth for chunkier items then use a block of wood between the hook and the wall.

· Use Your Drawers.

If you ever throw out any old bits of furniture then see if you can make use of them in your shed. An old chest of drawers will hold loads of tools or odds and ends and it is easy to fit a few simple partitions in each drawer.

And another update, I have finally finished all the copy for the laser tattoo removal hayward heath webpage. I am rather confused how I feel about this one, any criticisms are welcome

When I read, ‘Law of Attraction – Is it Real or All in The Mind?’ it was not the first time that I’d heard this theory. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that we can make things happen with our thoughts. I’m not ruling it out altogether but it does seem a little bit far-fetched.

The whole thing is not dissimilar to ‘positive thinking’ or ‘mind over matter’. Loads of people claim to have recovered from serious illnesses just with the power of thought.

Hmmmm. I wonder if I sit and think hard enough about Bill Gates sending me a cheque….

Finally before I go, I have just registered that I have been gapeing at my computer screen for the last few days and am really tired of my House Wallpaper, I think it is time for a revamp, these and more updates coming soon!