This is one of the most exciting products to use with a printer. We all know the importance of using the right paper with our printers. The coated products give such a good finish and bring out colour and clarity. The InkAID products enable you to coat almost anything that will go through a printer and achieve an excellent finish.

I spent a day with Jane Wild playing with these products and we had such fun. If you have an old inkjet printer that you're not too worried about, try making a collage on some interesting, weighty paper with lace, silks or similar. Coat with the White Matt InkAID (allow at least a day to dry) and print. On more normal inkjet printers, try coating fine aluminium sheets with Clear Gloss, or Semi-Gloss InkAID and you will be able to print permanently on the metal. I got this through the printer by taping it to paper with masking tape.

You can print on metal shim as well, using this particular InkAID but you need to be sure that it is clear of grease. Jane's collage on silk took the colour splendidly using the White Matt. There are several varieties of InkAID including a lovely iridescent one. It's worth looking at InkAID's web site (www.inkaid.com) where all the instructions for using the products are shown. We will writing a workshop on this product in a later issue of Workshop on the Web.

In Jane Wild's pics below, you can see, on the left, the effect of printing on silk with lace and a coating of White Matt. On the right, Jane has trapped tea-bag paper (gilded) and builders' scrim between layers of tissue and used the iridescent coating to print her design.

Please note: we are not responsible for the death of any printer and the products do not make the printouts washable.

Price £13.50 per pot of 473 ml (1 pint), currently only available in White Matt and Clear Semi-Gloss. Alternatively, a set containing 6 small pots is £25.95. Available from Art Van Go (WOW), The Studios, 1 Stevenage Road, Knebworth, Herts, SG3 6AN, UK, tel. 01438 814946, email , web site www.artvango.co.uk.

Here's a thought. Piles of beads, glittering on your surface, without a single needle to be threaded. Available in various colours; mine were sapphire and midnight. The beads are held in an adhesive - a very gloopy one - and you simply apply them to your work with a palette knife. I tried them on some metal and on a complicated surface of cast paper and they were fine. They come as the beads shown and also as the tiny accent beads that have no hole in them. Combining the two would be good. Once applied, leave for 12-24 hours (depending on the surface) to dry. They can't be washed so you'll still have to get the needle out for garments. Certainly a great way of embellishing any item from boxes and books to picture frames.

Available at £2.95 for a pot, from Hobby Horse, 42 Anchor Road, Bearcross, Bournemouth, BH11 9HS, UK, tel 01202 572111, email .

Pic (right): Layers of water-soluble paper (top) are painted and built up into a metallic-looking fragment ready to apply to a background (bottom).