Eco Printing on Gourds

"Inspiration exists, but it must find us working."

Pablo Picasso

Eco printing with walnut leaves on a gourd. I was messing around with eco printing on porcelain and then decided to see what would happen to a gourd, since I have a lot of them. I never had figured out exactly what I wanted to do with them-maybe this was the idea that was supposed to come along.

I soaked the gourds, the plant material, and the wrapping all in iron water and used leaves that usually work well with iron, kind of stacking the odds in my favor. Getting a gourd to actually soak is kind of trick-they want to bob around. As long as they don't have any cracks or holes they do not get mushy.

Trying to figure out how to keep the leaves attached until I could wrap the blanket around it. This worked pretty well.

Wrapped up and getting ready to steam. Needless to say the lid wouldn't go on the pan, so I made it a foil tent and steamed it for an hour. Since we have now officially run out of summer here (13 degrees last week-yikes!) gourds will have to wait until next year. I am getting some things together with the porcelain, pictures soon!

The holidays are coming! As promised I did put some scarves in the Etsy shop, along with many new buttons, pendants, and papers so be sure to check that out.

Fall Days

"To most human beings wind is an irritation. To most trees, wind is a song."

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

New Weed

And no, I am not trying to increase my SEO (search engine optimization) with that title-although it did cross my mind. Any-hoo, I thought I would show you my results using Watson's Willowherb.

This is what it looks like, sorry it is not the greatest picture, by the time I decided to try the plant it was at the end of its season. Those long curly things are the seed pods.

I decided to throw it in a stack of paper. I was alternating sheets soaked in iron with sheets soaked in alum. I do like the burgundy red with the mint green and I was really excited to see the wispy seed pods printed too.

Of course, I had to see what would happen on fabric so I went scrounging around in the weediest garden border on the north side of the yard and lucked out-there was some hiding behind the sour cherry tree! Since it worked really well with the iron/alum combo on paper I decided to do the same with fabric. This is silk crepe de chine pretreated with alum using an iron blanket.

And this is the iron blanket! I was so surprised this printed so well.

Be sure to check out my Etsy shop, there are lots of new things and I have been restocking the old.