Eco-print Fabric Journal

Last few months I've been playing around with dyeing fabrics and paper with leaves, India Flint style. The muted salmon pinks and browns along with vintage lace and vintage found objects, old jewellry, form into a book that has an aged and worn look about it (much like myself). Here is the result, an embellished journal made entirely by hand stitching with a long-stitch binding.

What I love most about this book is the combination of recycling objects from nature with objects that are made. Creates a nice symmetry I think.

Front Cover

Back cover

Spine

Opened book

Inside pages

Page print - Eucalyptus leaves

Dyeing to Print III - paper technique

About 2 months ago, I put down a couple of jars of solar dyes. One with flax seeds and one with morning glory. I left them for a month in the weak autumn sun. When I took off the lids, phew, did these babies stink!! Putrid rotten leaves, dumped by the neighbours fenceline, and jars quickly stuffed in the dishwasher. The results were quite subtle, but give a good aged feel to the fabric. And once they are rinsed in rain water and dried, thankfully the smell dissipates.

Here are the results. Morning glory produced a pale pink, salmony colour. The flax, a sort of tea shade, more of an English Breakfast than Lady Grey.

This sample is from a fabric book I have been making with the Eco dyed and Eco printed calico and mull. To make the pages for this book I followed the technique documented by Cassandra Tondro
My dyeing equipment doesn't yet include a very large pan, so to get all my pages in the pot I had to cut them first after spraying with alum spray.

Each page is stuffed with autumn leaves, made into a bundle tied up with string.

This is placed in a pot, on a rack above water, and weighted down with an old iron trivet that weighs a ton. This bundle was steamed for 2 hours, then left to cool.

Once cooled, I couldn't wait to unpack it.

Each page has a unique print of leaf, some darker and more distinct than others. In particular, eucalyptus and loquat work really well.

The pages were laid flat - on the kitchen floor - to dry, while I batted the cat, who loves shredding paper, away from my work.

The next day, when fully dry, I ironed them using a dry iron, and folded them into the book pages ready to bind into the cover. I will blog the finished product next time.........

Art of Seven

So this month I have two exhibitions on, which is stretching myself a bit thin, and am in a framing and book making frenzy and I really need to learn to say NO sometimes..... however all is going well at ART of SEVEN in Warkworth at the home of Marianda Twydell. I've made a couple of sales and had some lovely feedback.  The SEVEN include myself, Marianda, Biz Dempster, Mike de Haan, Judy Wood and her sister Helen Howard. It's been really nice to get back into exhibiting in terms of making me produce something out of my photos instead of keeping them to myself on the screen.

Pohutukawa Leaf and Recycled Frame.

I am also showing to the world, for the first time (oh no wait, for the second time), my assemblage shrines and getting mixed feedback, mostly people saying they find them interesting or even amazing, and a few implying that I am sick and twisted.... maybe they are right but do I care?? This is my latest, titled Epona for the Gallo-Roman goddess and protector of horses. 

Epona, mixed media assemblage shrine.

 Obviously she didn't do a good enough job of protecting these My Little Ponies from my mutations.  Too busy worrying about her belly button bling.