Making Paper from Plants
Dates: 15 June - 19 June 2026 (mon - fri)
Location: Elphin by Ullapool
Course Places : Please enquire using the email link below.
Price : £550
Tutors: Jan Kilpatrick and Jan Breckenridge
This week-long course will take you on a creative journey, exploring many of the possible methods of creating and embellishing plant-based papers.
My studio, in the remote north west Highlands, is surrounded by a wide range of grasses and fibrous plants, which we will pick, chop, boil, pulp and sieve in order to make beautiful, textural sheets of paper. We will also try combining fibres, including recycled papers, to achieve a wide range of effects. And, as a development of the basic process, we will make embossed surfaces, envelopes and pockets.
Whilst our hand-made papers are drying, we will experiment with dyeing and printing paper with everyday natural dyes and use leaves and flowers from my garden to make eco-prints. The ‘waste’ from this process will then be further developed in order to make skeleton papers (see the photographs below).
Whenever the sun comes out, we will make sun prints (cyanotype) with the plants. And we will use plant-based inks to make impressions of the fine details to be found in the flora, further embellishing some of the surfaces made earlier in the week.
You will leave with a pile of varied and unique hand-made papers, your own paper-making kit, and a decorated box full of your own experimental paper-based surfaces and recipes. If the weather is good and we are able to work outside, you might even leave with a sun tan!
Please click on an image to see the full picture.
Jan's studio is in Elphin, overlooking the magnificent mountains of Suilven, Canisp, Cul Mor and Cul Beag. This remote location means that accommodation is a little more difficult to find, but the experience of visiting this area makes the search well worthwhile. Many course participants opt to stay in Ullapool, which is 20 minutes drive away. It is a most picturesque fishing village, with a good range of accommodation to suit all budgets. There are many restaurants and takeaways and shops, as well as some evening entertainment, should you have any energy left at the end of that day's workshop. And students often group together and car share for their daily trip up the road, past Stac Pollaidh, to the studio. Please look at the Accommodation links page to find out more.
To read about an innovative community partnership approach to preserving and improving this landscape for the benefit of all, have a look at Coigach and Assynt Living Landscapes. To find out about the fascinating geology of this area go to North West Highland Geopark.
