Another Experiment - Eco Printing

A couple of days ago, one of the participants of the A Piece A Week challenge, showed us an image of her hand bound journal with eco-prints as covers. I had never heard of eco-printing, but being an eco freak I couldn't help but do some research, if and how I could try this method as well. After I stumbled upon these detailed instructions by Cassandra Tondro, my hands were aching to try it out. As usually, I didn't have more of the suggested supplies and tools than I did. Besides: after the long winter, we still don't have green grass not to speak about colorful leaves or flowers. But today, I found tiny spring flowers during my morning walk with the dog and just had to give this process a try. So I did, what I could with what I had :)

First, I tore some water color paper in smaller pieces using the suggested method: folding it back and forth and dampening the folds.

Then, I soaked the paper in warm water for more than an hours (honestly, I forgot about it).

After that, I arranged the tiny flowers and leaves on one of the pieces of paper (sorry, forgot to shoot a pic), covered it with another piece of paper, put a folded newspaper beneath and on top of the "sandwich" and ... ironed it for a while.

When I could not stand the suspension any more, I stopped ironing and opened the sandwich. Ta-dah! Behold my first ever eco-prints!

An additional plus from the ironing: the prints are almost dry by the end of the process. A minus: need to clean the iron of the black newspaper ink now. Next time, I will put a piece of paper towel on top of the stack :)

To see more creative spaces and join the fun, visit Creative Every Day