A few weeks ago I was in Asheville, North Carolina. Lots of walking, lots of journal pages, and lots of leaves. I drew leaves. I photographed leaves. But I wished that there was some way to actually get a leaf onto a page, the ones that I was collecting in my pocket as we walked; a tiny bit of the walk and the day. Last year I made walnut ink for the same reason. Sure, I can buy it, but making something out of the trail and the beauty to make other things of beauty after the autumn has passed, this is – I don’t know – a kind of contract that with nature.

It is possible to incorporate flowers and foliage into handmade paper with impressive results, but I don’t make paper, I only use it for book binding and other paper arts. However, after searching about a zillion journal sites online, I found something perfect. It’s called eco-printing. Silly name, great result.

There are several different methods of eco-printing, but so far this is the only one that I have tried.

1. Choose the right paper. 130 gsm was much too flimsy and tore after soaking. Watercolor paper of 230 gsm is often reported in tutorials as being too heavy, but I found it to work ok. Ideally something in the middle is good, say 160-ish or 180-something. (I am going to try 200 later this week and will report.)
2. Choose the right leaves. This is still trial and error for me. I have read that fresh leaves do not work well. As I arrived near the end of foliage season, that was not a problem. I just picked up whatever caught my eye as I walked until I had a small backpack full of different colors, shapes, and apparent ages.
3. Soak the papers, at least overnight, in water and mordant. I use alum. There are tutorials online that tell how to make a mordant with iron in the form of rusty nails, or vinegar, and whatnot, but I haven’t got that far yet. Also, soak leaves overnight separately (these are not cooking, just soaking in a stock pot).
4. Spread the leaves on sheets of paper. You can try something simple for a clear, isolated image, or just pile the things on. I did both. If you want to work with flat pages, you can find out how here with this excellent tutorial:

http://tondro.com/blog/category/leaf-monoprint-process/

I don’t have enough space to steam the pages flat, so I rolled my leaves and papers into bundles, then tied them with twine. Try to get the tightest roll you can.

5. Place in a vegetable steamer and steam for as long as possible, at least two hours, adding more water as needed. The longer they steam, the better. (Where I live electricity is very, very expensive, so I cut it off at two hours and the result was not bad.) When you have finished steaming, allow the bundles to dry naturally. Overnight would be good.
6. Once you have a dry bundle, unroll carefully, and prepare to swoon.

Eco-printing can be used to gorgeous effect with fabric. Here is another site by Wendyfe with a bunch of helpful information and stunning images:

http://wendyfe.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/eco-print-fest/

And this goes to the site of India Flint, who is the go-to guru for eco dying and printing:

http://www.indiaflint.com/

And here are more of my early experiments.