Ecoprinting throughout the year – July

July.

Pot – Rusty roasting tin.

Water – Tap water with vinegar.

Paper – cartridge, watercolour, mixed media paper

Mordant – alum acetate

Leaf dip – rust water

Plants – Cranesbill geranium, coreopsis, corn marigold, crocosmia, clematis, tagetees, cotinus, rose leaves.

Cooking time – 45 minutes, turned, 45 minutes.

Blanket – none.

Images

Conclusion – .

Coreopsis gave a good orange/ rust print. The purple clematis was disappointing, as were corn marigold and crocosmia lucifer which only gave a ghost print. The tagetee leaves printed well.

One of the papers ( top photo, middle bottom) looked as though the papers hadn’t been stacked properly, but I know they were. So I believe this was caused when soaking the papers in the bath of mordant where they don’t sit directly on top of each other.

I also made some prints using dye blankets, I will tell you about this process in my next post but here’s some of the prints I made using a dye blanket.

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

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 : )