The alum experiment

The first batches of eco printing were all done with white vinegar, I'd dip the papers into the vinegar until wet but not saturated, layer with plant material and steam away.
One of the tutorials I referred to mentioned alum, Amazon has it, so I used it for this batch. The results are totally different from those using vinegar. See?

 

Bright colors, deep browns, poison green, nothing subtle about this at all. I am not quite sure how exactly I feel about this.
I did not follow the instructions exactly, maybe that's why all these prints are so incredibly bright. I doubled the amount of alum suggested and soaked for an hour. I may just have to try again with what's left in the water and this time soak for a shorter amount of time. BTW, that's one of the reasons for all these blog posts - I want to have a record of what I did and how I did it. Not that I remember what all the leaves are, but I'm okay with that.
Here are a few more photos:

Berries and leaves from the same tree.

Leaves from an olive tree.

Probably eucalyptus leaves, fresh ones.

Old, dry eucalyptus leaf. Who would think you'd get such deep color from that?

 Not quite sure what most of these are. They came from bushes around the neighborhood.
These days, when I take the dog for a walk, I take two baggies: one for dog droppings and one for leaves, berries and whatever else I can find on the sidewalk. Today's walk yielded a few gingko leaves, I can see another printing session in my near future. Just have to figure out how to work that into my day ................