Karen sent me a few sheets of Clairefontaine DCP paper in the fall. DCP (which stands for “Digital Color Printing”) is a thick, white, glossy, A4 printer paper, and it’s apparently designed for printing photographs and other color graphics. It comes in ivory, too, and can also be used, Karen told me, for bookmaking.

I don’t have a color printer, and I haven’t tried to make a book since the 3rd or 4th grade. Frankly, I found the A4 size a little awkward at first, since it’s thinner and longer than standard American paper and didn’t really fit into any of my binders. So I stuck it in a folder and forgot about it until this weekend, when I needed to customize an old tea box for a present and didn’t have time to go out and get the proper supplies.

DCP, it turned out, was just the thing for the job. I wanted something I could write on (so decoupage was out), but I also needed paper that was thick enough to hide the images on the box I was reusing:

(Very tasty tea, by the way.)

Anyway, take a look at how thin and inadequate my ordinary “premium” printer paper was:

By contrast, the DCP gave me nearly perfect coverage:

So I glued it in place with rubber cement, trimmed the edges, and refashioned the box. I’m no artist, so I kept the decorations simple, and even stuck to the office-supply theme with a bit of highlighting:

123 T, if you’re curious, is a unique and tasty blend made from mint leaves from my garden at 123 Pioneer Street.