Ecoprinting throughout the year – March

March is here, it’s time for more ecoprinting / botanical printing experiments.

If you want to see the rest of the year type “Ecoprinting throughout the year” into the search box.

In the future there will be posts comparing plants for example, and a beginners step by step guide to printing on paper my way.

March.

Pot – Rusty roasting tin

Water – Tap water with vinegar.

Paper – Windsor & Newton cartridge paper, watercolour paper

Mordant – alum acetate

Leaf dip – rust water, the cranesbill leaves were soaked for about 5 minutes rather than just dipped in rust water.

Plants – dried acer leaves, dried wild cranesbill , aquilegia, new rose leaves, hellebore, gerbera from a bouquet of flowers.

Cooking time – 40 minutes, turned, 40 minutes.

Blanket – hellebore and gerbera being thick flowers benefit from a thick blanket like felt or old blanket.

Images

The gerbera flower in this photo is just the stain coming through from the flower on the other side of the paper.

Conclusion – Aquilegia leaf printed rust , which was unexpected so was the print from the new rose leaf. The dried acer and cranesbill were as good as I expected. The cranesbill prints were dark due to the longer soak in iron water. The bright pink gerbera printed yellow.

As the leaf buds are starting to open next month I will be trying out ecoprinting on paper with new foliage.

Christmas Gifts In My Etsy Shop

Hello, I thought I should let everyone know that although the house renovations are taking a lot longer than expected and I’ve not been able to do much making I still have new stock going into my shop regularly as I kept some work back for pre Christmas listing on Etsy. It’s something I do every year as it saves me having a mad rush making stock in November and December.

Click on the images if you would like to see more information.

There are some gorgeous acer leaf pieces including ecoprinted silk scarves, this one is in gorgeous muted shades.

Also acer leaf prints on paper, both framed, or to frame yourself. I’m always conscious of the price of posting so I like to have some lightweight gifts available.

There are some smaller ceramic gift ideas as well including snowdrop hearts which are usually sold out at this time of year. I made twice as many last January and held some back for the run up to Christmas.

There are a couple of ceramic soap dishes left but I have some waiting for a glaze firing so hopefully I might get them done this week.

I need to get a raku firing done as well as my hanging leaves are selling fast.

Mackerel are still available and small fish too, but these sell out really quickly.

There are days I wish there were more hours, I’m still decorating and waiting for the kitchen and floors to be finished, hopefully the house will be finished for Christmas. Maybe Santa will find my oven and oak flooring on the container ship and bring me a surprise delivery soon 🙂

Have a great weekend.

Jill

Framing up Ecoprints.

This week my frames arrived so finally I got to photograph the ecoprints in a frame. I especially like these dark wood effect frames with the tones in the ecoprints.

I hope you like them, if you would like to know more about my eco printing / botanical printing process just type in the search box.

Before I go I thought I’d tell you my kiln is on today, it’s a glaze firing so there will be ikebana bowls, incense leaves and soap dishes to come next week. see you later.

Botanical Prints – Holding On To Summer.

The swallows left last weekend and we had a ground frost yesterday. This week I decided to hold onto what’s left of summer, enjoying the odd sunny day in the garden collecting leaves to print as a constant reminder of sunny days.

Deciding to take my botanical prints onto another level I used some dyes along with the natural plant pigments and tannins from the leaves which produce the leaf prints.

Serendipity couldn’t have been kinder, I got some gorgeous colours, and even some yellow sunlight captured in a lot of  my prints, I wish I could say I planned this but I didn’t expect to get these gorgeous yellows, a constant ray of sunshine to hang on the wall.

These results were just perfect, expressing that particular day. I feel so connected to these prints, it’s the ritual of going out and looking at nature, picking, then layering up, printing and finally after what seems like a long wait unwrapping and seeing the results. It feels like capturing that moment in time. Consequently I could happily keep them all to myself but instead I will spread a little sunshine and just enjoy looking at them now while I mount them. There are quite a lot more botanical prints  to come, I’ve added some paper packs  for scrapbooking / journaling / card making to my shop too.

Soon I will get my head into Autumn mode, hopefully there will be a lot of good things to discover on my Autumn walks, it’s my favourite season. For now I will leave you with some scrummy botanical prints to enjoy.

These are individual prints with mounts  to fit a frame size 8 x 6 inches.

These are framed, I did intend keeping these but I think I will add them to my shop so I will see if there’s a need to order more frames.

Some closeups, it’s hard to capture the detail and the colours when they are behind glass but I forgot to take photos I was so eager to see them framed.

I hope you like them, I think I’m hooked on making these : )