The last eco printing post for a while

There's been a lot of eco printing going on at my house lately, the house seems to permanently smell of vinegar by now.

If you prefer just pictures and not a lot of chattiness, just scroll down to the bottom.

I've learned a lot, and here is a summary of what I like, don't like and a few observations:

I basically like the process, it's fun to gather leaves, flowers, various papers and assemble everything and be surprised by what comes out of the pan after the steaming process.

I tried both steaming and immersion printing and found I like steaming better. For the simple reason that it's easier with the equipment/supplies I have. When I first looked into this, two years ago, I bought a roasting pan which is meant for steaming. I cannot find the link or the instructions I must have printed out, but I'm sure that's what was recommended and I went with it. My pan is shallow, so when I add enough water to submerge my paper bundles, it almost comes up to the top of the pan. It's difficult to get everything out of the pan afterward and that's the main reason I prefer steaming.

I don't like using rusty things in the process, it makes for more grungy papers (for me, at least); not unattractive, but not what I'm after.

Adding dye to get a bit of color does not seem to work well for me. I use either too much or not enough.

I like being able to use such a wide variety of papers. Everything I've tried has worked out. The results on printed paper - book pages - are not as impressive as on plain paper, but it works. Also, and I only learned this in the last few experiments: when using thinner paper, it's quite possible that the plant imprint will transfer to the papers on top of and below the paper that's actually being printed. Could be a drawback or not, depending on what one likes.

If there's any paper I don't like as much, it's the really thick watercolor paper. I can't really think of a way to use it at this point. Everything else I can easily see going into a journal.

Flowers are tricky. You take a pretty, colorful flower and expect colorful results - and, no, red flowers do not translate into red imprints, neither does purple etc. My colorful mums ended up either brown or dark something (hard to tell, it could be blue, green, purple). Pansies don't work so well.

Anything thin, like pansies, thin leaves etc. can end up sticking almost permanently to the paper. There has been a lot of scraping things off with fingernails going on.

Dry leaves can work. I found that soaking them in water beforehand gave much better results. The same goes for bark.

Waxy leaves don't work so well. Neither do really delicate ones.

Fresh leaves, in general, work better than dry leaves.

What works best for me are maple leaves, eucalyptus leaves, hydrangea leaves and the leaves from those dreaded raspberry plants (they are like weeds around here. Don't watch for them, and your whole yard could be overrun with them.)

Alum versus vinegar - I haven't had the results I had hoped for with alum. Probably because I used more than recommended. The colors are pretty wild. I just might try that one more time, but with lots less alum in the soaking water.

I think Saturday's session may be the last one for a while. My house is overrun with wild papers by now and I signed up for an online class that requires a lot of my time.

It's been fun and a real learning experience and I am sure I'll do more of this - probably next year when there are flowers and new leaves.

Until then, here are a few pictures from my last steaming session:

 

 

 I used mostly thinner papers for this session and the above are just a few of the papers that came out of my pan afterward. The rest are kind of forgettable. Splotchy with not enough definition. There is a bit of pink involved. I had scooped out the water (a rather slow and painful process) from the immersion dyeing session and saved it. After I took the papers out of the pan this time, I heated up the reserved pink water and dipped the pages into it. The results are actually quite nice.

But, as I said, this is going to be it for a while. Hope you enjoyed my little journey into eco printing, it's been fun and I am sure there will be more, just not right now.

Yet more of the same

Yesterday, I did three batches of eco printing, that's about two too many.
I tried different things, some worked, some not so much. I will try to recap as short as I can.
For the first batch, I used rusty bits in the water. I also tried different kinds of paper, regular printing paper, 32 lb.; parchment paper, 24 lb.; Bristol paper (don't remember the weight, but it's thicker and has a smooth surface); Stonehenge paper (also thicker); ledger paper; tracing paper; book pages and canvas (comes in a pad). All of it worked just fine. Yes, it takes more careful handling, but nothing fell apart in the steaming process and nothing ripped or tore. I also tried pink dye, this time not enough to really show up.
I am not completely thrilled with the results, it's all a little too grungy for my taste.

 

I think these are from the second batch, also fairly grungy. I dripped a bit of pink dye on the papers. Again, not that thrilled.
Next, I tried the immersion method, no rusty bits, with pink dye. This time, obviously too much. Sheesh! I don't seem to do just right.

The leaves imprinted just fine on the pages I photographed, but there's just a little too much pink for my taste around the edges.
And for the last batch, I just used copper again, my usual steam set up, with a little of the pink residue left in the pan:

 

 

I am very pleased with the last two- nice imprints, I think that's Bristol paper.
And here, just for fun, is a picture of the deli paper I use to protect my paper bundles. It's been through several steamings:

I have one more batch steaming as I type this and will show pictures - if things turned out well - and summarize what I've learned, what I like and don't like about this whole eco printing business.

Alum experiment No. 2

Just real quick, a few pictures from the second alum experiment (I took pictures of the process for the "this is how I eco print" post). The first time I used alum, I soaked the papers in a bucket for 1 hour. I didn't quite like the results and, this time around, I only soaked for 15 minutes. The results aren't much different, still very bright and vivid. If I ever use alum again, I will use much less in the soaking water.
So, here are a few pictures of what I ended up with:

 

All these are still drying outside. Lesson learned here: lay the papers out in a single layer as soon as possible.

This one is interesting (at least, to me it is). The really dark green splotches are made by dark red flowers, those little mums you find all over the stores these days.

Maple leaves.

Gingko leaves, a little disappointing. I was hoping for something more detailed, but they are delicate and it shows in the results.

Hydrangea leaves. Those worked well.
There were 3 eco printing sessions yesterday, not all the papers have dried yet and I experimented with pink fabric dye - with mixed results - but that's for another blog post.

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 ................

Yet more eco printing

I wasn't thrilled with the results of the previous session - too much blue dye, not what I was looking or hoping for, so that same afternoon I set up another batch of papers, using what was left of the water in the bottom of the roasting pan and diluting and, this time, having the tile on the bottom, but no second tile on the top of my paper bundles. The results are much more to my liking:

Flowers from my stevia plant, Japanese maple leaves etc.

Berries from a neighborhood tree. I like what the blue dye did here.

Eucalyptus leaves with a bit of blue dye.

Grape leaves, oak leaves and a bit of dye. Again, happy with the results.

Grape, oak and eucalyptus leaves.
Obviously, I am not showing every paper I ended up with. Some are just not that interesting, but I was happier with the results of this session than almost any other one.
Time to take the dog for a walk and collect a bit of printing material. Wish I could remember where I found those cool seed pods.

More experiments in eco printing

As I said it my previous post, this eco printing is a little addictive.
I did two more experiments yesterday and learned quite a lot - again.
I was inspired by the results one of the women in my FB got with blue dye and decided to try using Rit dye. I had already figured out that using the tiles on both sides of the paper bundle acted as too much of a resist, so I decided to use only one tile. And, just for fun, have one bundle tile up, and the other bundle tile down. Big mistake:

Do what's on the left and absolutely do NOT do what's on the right - unless you want dyed papers instead of printed ones. Left was steamed tile down, right tile up.

 

 Outside and inside of paper. Not quite what I was after.

This is better.

Close-up of raspberry leaf. Those print nicely and raspberry bushes are like weeds around here. Just have to be careful of those stickers.

The rest of the page.

And this is my - ahem - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme page. Parsley does not print well.
This whole experiment was more a lesson in what not to do. I like some of the effects I got with the Rit dye, but I probably should not have used as much as I did - about 2 TB (I used the pre-mixed liquid). I did another session with dye and that turned out much better. But those pictures will have to wait for another post.

More eco printing

There's been a lot of experimenting going on here, some of it worked, some - not so much.
This eco printing is quite a learning experience.
Here are some pictures from session 2 - obviously, only the good ones. There are many more not so good ones. I used a bit of blue food color in the water and it shows on the edges of some of the papers, but wasn't that impressive.

Japanese maple leaves.

I have no idea :-) But I like the variety of colors I got.

Berries from a tree in the neighborhood, no idea what it's called.

Some sage leaves and a few others.

More Japanese maple leaves and a grape leaf.

My stevia plant flowered again and those tiny flowers print nicely.

What I learned this time around:
Take an extra baggie with you when you take out the dog, you never know when you'll find nice leaves, berries etc.
Bark does not print well at all. Neither does lichen. No, I did not rip the lichen off trees. It was hanging from a lot of branches that ended up on the ground in our yard after that big storm that started all those awful fires around here.
Use a weight to hold down those paper bundles. Without it there isn't enough contact between papers and plant material.
More pictures of experiments coming soon. Experiment 3 did not work out terribly well, experiment 4 was better.

A bit of eco printing

I tried eco printing for the first time a couple of days ago. I had looked into it 2 years ago, had gone out to buy a nice roasting pan at the thrift store and collected a few leaves and left it at that.
A few weeks ago, several women in one of the FB groups I belong to posted YouTube videos and pictures of their eco printing and I decided I had to try, too.
Here are a few of the papers I ended up with:

This is thinner paper than recommended (and I don't remember what it is, it was a scrap). But the finish was smooth and the results are very nice. A grape leaf, a few sage leaves and, I believe, a flower from my anemic mum plant.

Again, thinner than recommended paper with nice results. Probably Japanese maple leaves.

This is 140 lb. watercolor paper. Another grape leaf and the flowers from a vividly purple salvia/Mexican sage plant.

More 140 lb. watercolor paper. Another grape leaf, sages leaves, another flower from that mum plant and a twig from a plum delight bush.

This one is pretty wild and I don't really know what plants I used. Again, watercolor paper.

Watercolor paper, the flowers from one of my succulents and another twig from that salvia bush.

A few observations:
Eco printing is not difficult. Results are not predictable; the purple or pink or dark red flowers did not print that way. 140 lb. watercolor paper takes ages to dry completely. Results differ a lot between the slightly rough 140 lb. watercolor paper and the smoother, thinner paper I used. It seemed to me that the colors were different with the lighter paper. But it's fun and a bit addictive. I have a second batch steaming away on the stove right now and plan to do more - just as soon as I can get my hands on some eucalyptus leaves.

In case anybody wants to try this, I used this YouTube tutorial and referred to this and this tutorial/blog post.

I did it the simple way: a roasting pan with an insert, 6" x 6" tiles from Home Depot, dipped my papers in white vinegar, layered the papers with the plant material in between the tiles, held those together with rubber bands (I am running out, need to collect more), added plenty of water in the pan (but not above the level of the insert) and let the whole thing bubble and steam for 2.5 hours. I used a weight from a discarded weight machine the first time, I forgot to use it this time, oops! After the steaming process was done, I let things cool down, then opened the bundles, put the tiles aside, separated the papers and let things cool completely.

Why do I not always remember which plants I used? Because sometimes I peeled them off as I separated the papers (and that's when I don't remember), sometimes I waited until the papers had dried. I really should be lots more scientific about it and write what I used on the paper as I assemble, but that's just not really me. I don't expect predictable results and I'm okay with that.

Let's see what the second batch looks like.