Overprint results!

Well,I overprinted some of the prints posted on the blog at the left side of your screen.  I used mostly wild cherry, oak, red maple, sea grape, red passion flower, eucalyptus, and elm .  In some of the previous prints, there was a lot of iron, and one print had wood ashes scattered over it before drying.  This stack was cooked in a copper rich dye bath that had been used about 5 times. See if you can match the new with the old.

Spreading the word!

We had a great workshop Saturday at the Pioneer Florida Museum in Dade City, Florida.  I taught 4 students how to fold paper maze books, then stuff them with plant material.  We then cooked the books and let them cool.  When we removed the plant material, they had some lovely books to show for their efforts.  I wish to acknowledge the work of Shereen LaPlantz in her book Cover to Cover for the wonderful creative ideas we were able to use in our workshop.  We are planning another workshop at the Museum on January 19, 2014

Continued Reading!

Once your appetite for eco printing books gets going, it is hard to fill it up!  I could just keep on folding and stuffing and cooking until I dropped!  I am going to post some pages from my next three books, and I hope you enjoy them.

Read any good books lately?

I have just taken two new instant books out of the pot this morning, and already I can tell that they will make wonderful reading.  I got some very good, clear prints of some lovely leaves, and all together they tell me what went on in the cookpot.  For this recipie, I used the leaves from Oak (Quercus), Cercis Canadensis (Redbud), Ligustrum (Ligustrum sinensis), Wild grape, (Vitis vitis) along with some scrap steel wire, some washer andrusty bottle caps.  I had a copper rich dyebath used about 3 times before, in an aluminum pot, so you can see that there was quite a mixture of metals and plant materials full of tannins.  The results were very satisfying to me, and I hope they will be to you also.

Fall has arrived--It's time for new prints!

The cool days and nights have finally arrived.  I can cook batches of prints again.  The prints for this posting were cooked in a small pressure cooker inside, but will probably be the last ones so cooked until next Summer.  It is cool enough and I have enough firewood that I can start printing outdoors again.  I will also have a large stock of fallen leaves to work with and interesting fall flowering weeds.  It is always fun to see what the outcome will be by mixing one type of leaf with another in the same print.  Then to change the metals used to mordant, but keep the same leaf combinations.  I am including a few of the prints that came out of the mornings batch.  I have photographed pairs of prints that were facing each other in the stack and you can see it is not always a mirror image.  I have also shown single enlarged prints of my favorites.  Enjoy!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Book Two In Progress!

The creation of small single edition books is a fun way to enjoy my love of Eco Printing, and to learn techniques that bring out the best of color and line from my materials.  Here are four (out of 40) of my latest pages for the new book.  They are all cooked and printed in an aluminum pressure cooker that has the copper bottom from an old pan laying in it.  140 lb watercolor paper, no additional mordants added.  The pages were cooked the first time for 20 minutes under pressure.  Then they were allowed to cool overnight still sandwiched between the ceramic tiles.  The next morning, I opened the stacks and inserted some additional plant materials and metal bits and wires, then closed the stack again and pressure cooked for 20 minutes more and allowed to cool.  Some of the first colors changed a bit as they reacted with the metals, but an interesting red tone began to spread across the pages.  I like the final prints, and they they will make a lovely book.

Help with Translator!

Tatiana, thank you for your comment.  I'm glad you enjoy the prints.  Thank you for telling me about the Translator.  When I set this page up, one was not available.  I have set the Translator to translate, but it will not let me choose a language.  Any ideas how to overcome this?  Do you know if it is possible to select more than one language?