Micro & Maker email series: tiny worlds + a mini project

Craft your own mixed media art book inspired by the tiny world around you

This is Bee-Witched: a beekeeper’s notes on making art to live life.

Happy announcement day!

Together we'll be exploring the tiny worlds all around us, with a full corresponding bookarts project, complete with chatty (sorry/not sorry) art making tutorials 🫶. I initially thought of making this for paid subscribers only, and then I thought, ugh, payment, so I just made this publication free to everyone forever.¹

Each email will bridge the gap between noticing and creating, between the natural world and our own creative selves. This isn't just about observation—it's about connection.

The series:

• Discover what wasps can teach us about patience and paper-making

  • Mini project: Making paper for your art book + origami bookmaking

• The living art of lichen

  • Mini project: Mark making with a magnifying glass

• Explore why working with our hands makes us more fully human

  • Mini project: Making a fabric scroll - from dyeing to stamping to stitching ideas.

• Connecting with the patterns in our own environments

  • Mini project: Nature printing with and without a Gelli Plate

• Remember how to make things that last

  • Mini project: Putting it all together into your very own origami journal

The tiny world mini book project

This isn’t just any old book project, it’s specifically about you, your location on this earth, and the materials you have at hand to make. No special skills or equipment required—just curiosity and willingness to slow down and notice.

The end project might just look something like this:

🦋 Your first mission, should you choose to accept it:

Find a patch of lichen (hint: look on rocks, trees, or old wood). Spend two minutes really looking at it. Notice its colours, patterns, texture. You're looking at one of Earth's oldest artists, a being that paints in centuries and survives in the harshest conditions imaginable. Fancy that!

And in our next email, I'll show you why this tiny explorer holds secrets that scientists, artists, and makers are only beginning to understand.

Until then, stay curious,

Jessica

P.S. If you're already thinking "but I'm not creative" or "I don't have time for this," don't worry. This journey is about small moments and simple acts. We'll start tiny, with just a few minutes of noticing. The magic comes from there.

Ready to begin? Hit reply and let me know what you notice in your two-minute lichen observation. There are no wrong answers—only new perspectives to discover.

Recommended reads to get your juices flowing:

I am bear, soil, wolf, nettle and oak

A Parasite, Clickbait and Honesty

The Power of Stillness

85. Too many treasures

Dancing in the Leaves

1. Until I, like, somehow explode like a comet into the stratosphere of substack stardom, in which case I’ll totally be selling out and opening paid subscriptions again.