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‘Printmaking’ sounds so complicated and difficult, doesn’t it? But we all make prints at some point in our life, whether it’s with a rubber stamp at the office (or, like me, during attempts to potty train, where the star pupil gets stamps on her hands and feet if she produces the goods) or accidentally treading muddy footprints over the kitchen floor.

Here are a few simple ways you can try some deliberate printmaking if the idea appeals to you:

> Potato printing. You remember this from playgroup, right? Cut the potato in half and carve away. Simple shapes are best to begin with, but why not get ambitious if you have the time? You don’t have to stick to spuds; carrots, parsnips, courgettes, firm cheese, squashes, marrows would all work … And poster paints are the traditional medium, but you might experiment with acrylics. Or last night’s stew.

> But of course, potatoes go off, meaning your lovingly carved stamp will perish. So upgrade to rubber. Did you ever carve out an eraser at school to make a rubber stamp? If not, you missed out. You can carve a small pattern on a small eraser or try an enormous one (have you seen those ones engraved ‘For BIIIIIIIIIIG mistakes’? They are still around, I noticed recently, unchanged from my childhood). Use a scalpel knife, but be very careful. You can use your stamp with a simple ink pad. I saw some of my classmates on my Illustration MA make some beautiful books with only this technique.

> Scrapbooking has become such a huge craze that, if you don’t fancy making your own rubber stamps, you can buy almost any design. Play with it. The beauty is in the unchanging repetition available to you; it becomes art when you intervene enough to use that repetition to good effect.

> I’ve mentioned monoprints before. The idea is that you draw on one surface and press it down onto your paper, creating a backward print. You can usually make only one print (hence ‘mono’) but you might squeeze out a couple more slightly degraded ones. The easiest method of all is to draw on your own hand with a slow-to-dry medium such as ink; you can also try any glossy or non-permeable paper which will shed the ink easily.

> If you have a child, finger, hand or even foot painting is a lot of fun. Don’t just watch, join in!

> If the whole idea of prints excites you, why not look into screenprinting or engraving classes? They are popular subjects for night school and since the proper equipment can cost a lot and be quite bulky, it makes sense to try it in a group environment first.