Eco Printing Progress – Part 1

I’ve spent the past few weeks investigating eco printing,  from books and on Youtube.

These are my first batch being steamed.

Some colour on the paper so I thought they looked promising.

How wrong could I be, bluebells with virtually no colour at all.

I thought steaming flat in this old wok might be better.

The string is coloured so maybe it’s worked this time.

I painted the mordant on but unfortunately you can see the brush marks, but at least there is more colour.

So I played around for a few days, using various rusty bits and solutions and finally I got a result that wowed me.

I have torn some of the papers handling them.

I have prints on both sides so I need to decide which ones I like best as I am going to put these in a triple frame , if I can find a wall to hang them on.

Also I’m having  these printed as cards to put in my Etsy shop.

And so the experiments continued, each time the results differed, even using the same mordant and plant material, I found the process so gripping I cooked and dyed until I ran out of watercolour paper.

My house may smell like a pickle factory, ( or is it rotten cabbage? ), but I’m very pleased with some of my pieces, I’ll show you in another post soon.