One of my favourite times of the year is autumn and one of my favourite ways to hold onto the beauty and mystery that the season holds is to make ecoprints, steaming leaves I have foraged on my hikes into paper that I then make into cards, framed prints, or book covers.
Dying with plants is an inexact science but I have been doing this one for years and here’s hoping that some of these pointers will steer you in the right direction with your attempts.
Choose a robust paper. Anything under 130 g/m is likely to tear when it is wet. I tend to use a watercolour paper that is 300 g/m. It makes for a sturdy substrate that will then be a nice weight for working into a project.
Choose your leaves! Not going to lie, this is a bit of an art, and the more batches of prints you make, the more you find from trial and error what really pops in your finished pages. I can tell you that I have the best results from leaves that had fallen from the tree – do not take them from the tree itself. The leaf should still be fresh, not too dry and have a quality that I can only describe as being ready to give up its colour. Collect a variety of shapes and colours.
Soak your papers overnight (or longer) in water and mordant. I use alum, but if you want something else, there are lots of ideas online. I use about two tablespoons per gallon. (Note, in the U.S. you can buy alum in the pickling supplies of the spice section in the grocery store. In the U.K., I have had to order mine online.) It is also a good idea to soak your leaves overnight in a water and mordant bath but I have cheated when I forgot and my results were usable.
I don’t have a lot of space so I bundle several layers of leaves and papers at a time, rolling them up around a stick like you would a burrito or sushi roll (see video). Make the bundle tight and snug then bind with twine. Lately I have started using gauze around the outside of the bundle to hold it in place and to add some leaf colour to my gauze that I will then use in other projects. Place bundles in a big pot, add an inch of water, cover, and steam for at least four hours. Turn them from time to time for even steaming.
When finished, leave them tied until dry, or nearly dry. I actually place them on my radiator and turn during the day and they dry in one or two days. You can also try placing them in the oven with a very low heat, turning often. Or you know, just wait a day or two. Finally, unroll and compost your leftover leaves and make some good karma. Iron your prints flat.
Here’s a short video to give you an idea of what the process looks like.
Happy printing!
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September 16, 2024 at 2:40 am
Hi! Can you tell me what the shortest amount of time is that I can have these dry enough to unroll, using the oven? In other words, at lowest temp setting, approx how many hours? Do you think they’d dry faster without the gauze?
I’m trying to present a craft at a ladies group retreat but we have a limited amount of time from start to finish (two days).
Thanks for any help you can give me!
October 22, 2024 at 3:57 pm
Hi Rhonda, please forgive my late reply. I understand about the drying predicament – I also do workshops where paper drying is dead space. You can try removing the gauze but I suspect your best bet is to turn that low heat on and turn the bundles every ten minutes or so. Also, they do not have to be completely dry to unbundle. By heating and turning for (I’m kind of guessing here) an hour (hour and a half would be even better) then they will still be damp but you can unroll them, compost the leaves, and then iron the papers with a dry (not steam) iron. This will flatten and continue to dry the papers and I’m pretty sure this will work. Maybe you can do something during that hour-plus such as make ink from onion skins or avocado or do some mark making using foraged sticks and twigs and stuff to complement the working in nature idea. Keep me posted!