Off to Lake Oswego!

I am starting out very early in the morning to head to the festival in Lake Oswego. The great thing about eco-printing is that you can take it along. Over Memorial Day weekend I did a show in Port Angeles Washington. Some good friends put me up while I was there. Dan was kind enough to take me over to the Discovery Trail to pick up some goodies to work with and when we got back Kim lept into action taking pictures-now I finally have some with me in them!

Sorting through all the pickings:

Starting to roll it up:

No peeking!

Voila! Rusted nails and iris petals, among other treats!

Bundles

These will need to sit a bit. Hopefully ready for Art Fest.

Fungus is our friend

This piece of silk noile was steam printed with leaves from a eucalyptus tree that was covered with fungus.

Weeds

What a lovely use for knapweed!

Ok, maybe seaweed wasn't the greatest idea I ever had...

Steam printing with seaweed sounded like a great idea, it is all kinds of different colors and shapes, oh my how can a girl resist. Trouble is, think about the concept of steamed seaweed. Yeah, it smells just like that. While it did make some fantastic colors and patterns, I could barely stand to have it around. Trying to be as gentle as possible, I attempted to wash out the smell. Although a lot better, it took so much effort that most of the colors disappeared. They may have been transient anyway, who knows.
Anyway, I thought I would post some pictures of a little more successful experiment. The first picture is of a steam printed scarf using red cabbage. Yes, it has a smell too, but it doesn't have the staying power of cooked seaweed!

The next picture is of a scarf that was also eco-printed with red cabbage, but given a post bath in a light alum solution-voila! Blue!

Fun with Eucalyptus

Recently I went to visit a friend on the Washington coast and there in her front yard were two different types of eucalyptus! The first picture is a detail of the round leaf variety used with rusted nails.

The next is from the other tree, a variety with long skinny leaves.

The last is done with dollar eucalyptus, purchased from a florist.

So many plants to play with, so little time!!!

Seaweed Salad

I brought home bags of seaweed off the beaches of Olympic Peninsula, we will see what happens. Needless to say I did the steaming outside for this one!