I bought some new shirts yesterday – interleaved inside was some lovely white tissue. I folded it into 3rds, then half to get a square, then half, then half and kept going until I had a small, multi-layered square about 8cm on the side.

Next I crumpled that so the centre of the square was a point. It was tough as there were so many layers. I then opened the last halving, reinforced the valley between, inverted one of the points (as one was up, the other down), and re-crumpled the points.

Repeating this technique, opening a layer, reinforcing the valleys in-between each point, inverting half so they all pointed the same way and re-crumpling, allowing the crumples to become more random as they thinned out.

Repeat this until you reach the one layer thick level and, although it initially is a bit of a wrestle to reinforce, orient and re-crumple, the paper is now so thoroughly crenellated that amazing things start to happen.

Gently easing the crumpled mess back out and open results if a delicious organic geometry that resembles coral.

I re-crumpled and decided to experiment with INK. I had some black (good old Quink) and “Barossa Grape” – two of the colours I use in my fountain pens and added a small amount to a smaller amount of water, then painted the ink on to the undersides of the crumple.

It “wicked” up through the crumples in interesting ways. The black looks like a deep violet but the grape did something odd – like a paper chromatograph, it separated into two really different colours – a bright purple and a cyan colour around the edges. Although difficult to photograph, the result is interesting.

I regret not applying the colour to the other side, but… live and learn, right?

Fascinating how much joy can be derived from the WRAPPING paper of a thing.