Dice Doodles x Altered Book Hour - Halloween Special Edition 2025

Spooky season themed dice-driven art games from Dice Doodles and Random Doodle Club will meet creepy collage and paper-folding from Altered Book Hour! Inspired by ghosts and ghouls (and the odd friendly spider), we'll be making creepy and wonderful things in our altered books using dice to take the stress out of choosing what to make. All collage and drawing materials, scissors, glue, and old books provided. Bring your own altered book or a hardback sketcbook if you prefer.

Altered book games

Activities at this event are designed in keeping with our no-skills, relaxing drawing games from Dice Doodles:

• No previous drawing/collaging experience is necessary, & no particlar art skills needed
• In their simplest form, each game is playable with just one pen or pencil, lined or plain paper, and random numbers generated using a six-sided die (D6) or generator app
• However, any media can be used - collage, paint, coloured pens, it's up tp you! We'll suggest variations for different methods, and for different ways of generating randomness like coin toss, shuffled cards, book index numbers, etc
• Games are either roll as you go, or are pre-decision games where you generate a set of D6 rolls, and then take a minute to think about how you’ll proceed (some people find this more relaxing, others prefer the spontaneity of rolling each turn)

We'll provide all the materials, dice rolls, and paper folding instructions at the event, and email notes with all the games, plus a set of randomly generated D6 rolls after the event

What is Dice Doodles?

Drawing can be relaxing, but sometimes it's hard to decide what to draw and easy to worry about how to draw it. At Dice Doodles we aim to share fun and easy doodle games to relax with. Each doodle only requires one pen/pencil (but Immy will provide ALL of the pencils!), any kind of paper, and no particular drawing skills. We use simple sets of rules and randomly generated numbers to take the decision-making out of sketching patterns, and relaxing abstract drawing to help give our brains a rest and process daily experiences. Activities aim to be short and easy to repeat as a warm-down at the end of the day. And they can be a great start to keeping a visual diary.

What is an Altered Book?

An altered book is an artwork created by changing any existing printed book in some way. We'll provide you with plenty of collage materials and art supplies, but you can also bring along any materials you like to add to your book; your own photographs, paper collage, pens, and drawing materials. We will explore collaging, drawing, and paper folding techniques to alter your book pages. Old books to use in starting a project, paper collage materials, glue, scissors, washi tape and pens/pencils/paint will be available for you to use.

Hosts:

Immy Smith - head of pencil hoarding

Neile Wright - paper folder in chief

Please note:

This workshop is suitable for people aged 16 and over. We don't recommend this event for young children, because we use a variety of scissors and cutting tools for collage.

This workshop is pay what you can; we suggest a donation of £5 to help us cover our room hire, refreshments and materials costs. Reserve your place online - cash and card/contactless payment accepted on the day