Guides

Paint your own Christmas cards with watercolour. What you need, how to set up your cards, and four easy designs for beginners, including a Kiwi summer Christmas.

Make your own Christmas tree ornaments, gift tags and keepsakes with oven-bake polymer clay. A simple step-by-step guide with three easy projects, what you need and how to bake.

Omokoroa No 1 School in Tauranga turned artwork from all 320 students into a canvas installation for the school office. The planning, materials and quantities that worked.

Cheap stretched canvases often look identical online. Here are the five things to check, weight, priming, corners, frame depth and tension keys, so you know what you're actually buying.

Three of the world's most famous acrylic brands. Big price differences. Big quality differences. Honest NZ stockist comparison: pigment, price, availability, and our verdict.

NCEA Visual Arts supply lists read like foreign languages. Plain-English checklist for Levels 1–3, three budget tiers, plus tips from real NZ teachers.

Flat paint is fine. Textured paint is unforgettable. From palette-knife impasto to salt watercolour to crackle paste, 15 texture techniques every Kiwi painter should master.

"What should I draw?" is the question that kills more sketchbooks than anything else. 11 weekend drawing prompts ranked by difficulty and time, all with a 2B pencil and a sketch pad.

Every Mont Marte acrylic line compared honestly, Signature vs Premium Satin vs Dimension, with a quick verdict table for beginners, NCEA students, and serious painters.