Botanical imprints on paper 紙上植物移印染

 

There are lots ways of making paper prints with plants. Thanks to James Dennison,  he does beautiful prints and his wealth of botany knowledge inspires me. 

I tried some sorts of papers, like watercolor paper, sketch paper, drawing paper, used envelopes...... and recently the abandoned index paper.  Different papers have different outcomes of prints.  I'm not sure what chemicals or ingredients of the industrial paper making. Some botanical imprints on watercolor papers are quite nice but costly.  Instead I use the abandoned index papers with my simple method. 

  

Index papers are thin as the normal A4 writing papers. I cut off the margins and fold each piece.

 

In between the folds I placed the reusable plastic sheets (heat resist kitchen wraps).  This is to avoid "breeding" or "overlaps mess".  Put the plastic sheets a bit extend outside the paper margin for easy unfolding after boiling.

 

Gently damp both bottom and upper sides of the paper before placing leaves.

 Or cover the leaves with a fabric scrap soaked with iron water. This will bring out the leaf outlines.

 

  Sandwich tie the batch with the aluminum plates. 

 

I usually boil in the used rice cooker for an hour. The batch of paper on the bottom and other bundles on the top just to save energy to make more than one thing together. 

 After an hour boiling......Open it..... the prints on index papers like these.......

 Put the papers on a towel and air dry but before dry up......

  put the heavy books over the stack of damp papers overnight  to make them flat and smooth.

 Take them out from the book weights after a night and let all dry up

 Prints on my index papers

 I would like to make a booklet with coptic binding.  That's how I make the art journals with abandoned papers. 

Other than making art journals I also do prints on fabrics. I have instant download pdf English version  and Russian version for the basic yet colorful shades in my on line shop ETSY