How I ecoprint/ecodye paper. Fast easy fun method. No boiling. Perfect for botanical journal making

hi everybody welcome back to my youtube channel i hope you're all having a nice weekend and enjoying the last bit of the weekend now what i have here in front of me is a selection of flowers and leaves and bits and pieces i use for eco dyeing i've been watching videos on eco dyeing for i don't know how long and it's seen i've seen people you know boiling stuff for anything from one to three hours tying stuff up in stones adding various chemicals and bits of rust to a big pot and it didn't seem terribly eco to me so i did a few experiments and this is what i've come up with first of all i'll show you what i used i use fuchsias you can get these wild or you can have them in your front garden but i cut them in half i used the small fuchsia and i cut it in half there's a full one and there's one cut down i also used hydrangeas and more hydrangeas over here and berbarus this turned out very well i used ivy leaves i'm not showing them here because i'm sure you all know what ivy leaves i use cosmos petals cosmos leaves and i think that's all i'll show you so far i also use buttercups and a kind of a thing like a dandelion it's not a dandelion but if you have a lawn you'll have this thing in your lawn unless you look after it very carefully so i wanted a really fast easy method that people could use when they made a botanical journal or an eco journal like we're all used to dyeing paper with tea and coffee so i'll show you the results i got using these plants and then i will go ahead and do do a bit of eco dyeing with you i haven't done a live tutorial for ages so bear with me now wait after what is this one the here one is the dandeliony thing in the front garden you get a kind of a a delicate you can see the petals and then the green bit at the bottom of the petals then i used a rose leaf that's another thing i mean you can get her up you don't have to have that you can do this even if you don't have a garden i mean you can if you somebody gives you a bunch of flowers and there'll probably be roses in it and you can you know use the tip off the leaves which you're supposed to do anyway i think if you from flowers and you can see there are bits of the the leaves there but i think it gives a nice effect because the dye comes out of the underneath of the leaves so this is the underneath of the leaf here and this is the this is the outline of these and yes i do press them but this is an instant effect you're going to have to wait and see the actual demonstration see what i do with it here are some hydrangeas they're the hydrangea leaves and they those are the actual little individual they're not flowers if anybody is into gardening you know they're not flowers they're called something there's some fancy name for them and this is a5 size paper so perfect for a journal but i've done them around the edges so you can well this one isn't done around the edges but so you can write in the middle this is a large fat fuchsia with some ivy leaves and you can see the dye is running out of it because it was so juicy and so squashy now the next thing is the berberis this little fellow here sorry i'll show you him again a lot of people have him in their gardens and flower rangers love this particular plant but this is the effect i got this is the outline that you get from the front of the leaf and then this is the the back of the leaf where the dye uses out and these are a little kind of back the leaf again but slightly i think this might be the second time i got that's the first time i pressed them and this is the second time they got more dye out of them but they look more kind of skeletonized i think is the word like you could make up a little flower arrangement really around the edges of the pages now i think i have more fuchsias here and you can see um see the way they turned out this one is really the big one is really too squashy and too juicy and the some of them you can see the pollen i don't know what this was up here oh yes i think this was some kind of creeper virginia creeper or something like that you just have to try whatever you can find now the next thing is just a buttercup and you can see here they're still pressed into the page and this is the kind of skeleton effect on the other side and what i do to get rid of the leaves i just get a nail brush and brush them off so now you might want to collect up the peppers and use them for something else as you can see with a bit of effort you can get rid of the actual peppers themselves but you might want to leave the petals there for some reason so there that's okay now i'm going to show you how i do it and it's an instant method well nearly instant which we like we want effects straight away i use die cutting machine i use the ordinary sandwich or whatever you're for cutting thin metal dies but i use a shim but not too much of a shim if you use too much of a shim with this the flowers will you know the dial come out of it and juice will run all over the place and might stain your precious clothes so we're going to try it first of all with some hydrangeas because these are really really spectacular and i know your next question is what paper do i use now where do i see the paper i use is just from this book here that i got in the range you buy a set of three i think it's probably 160 gram i also tried mixed media paper and i've tried tea dyed paper and they all most of the ones i showed you were done on mixed media paper now where's that hydrangea here there put it back here so i'll put it up in the corners just as if you were decorating a page and i'll try some of the the cosmos leaves put on the edge as well this could probably make a lovely little bookmark if it turns out okay so i get my plates put them in just as if you were cutting a thin metal die and i have a shim here of two bits of the same paper and i'll run it through and we will start praying that it all turns out okay i can hear the flowers squelch i don't know if you can and i'll just take it out and look at it after one run through you can see even on the front side we've got a result look at that you can see the outline of the flowers the dye and it does smell a bit um green and leafy take off the leaves now that is really spectacular and that literally took two seconds to die i mean or to them press and to put the dye on the paper and some dies coming out on the other side if you like this sort of messing you will enjoy it now another important thing about these don't leave them in sunlight they're ideal these pages are ideal for a journal they're meant for a journal but don't kind of use them in any artwork that would be exposed to the sun because the sun they just fade i don't know if you ever got a present of um a dried flower picture back in the old days when they were very popular and you'd hang it on the wall and it would turn just brown in no time that's the sun it sort of oxidizes them rust them i'm not sure what's the technical term but you don't want to lose that lovely kind of splattered flower dye effect so that's one and next of all i found that i could run the hydrangeas through a few times to get a bit like um what they call it um second generation stamping you can run them through a few times and get a more delicate effect but this time we'll go for broke with the fuchsia i think and as i said i've cut the fuchsia in half and wait a minute here we are there's the fuchsia sorry from bucket and i'll also try a few of the little berber sleeves as i said you could make a little design and have great fun and i'm putting some of these in upside down just to show you the difference and here we go make your sandwich don't forget your shim at the bottom and line it up and off we go i'm just using my mini die cutter just purely for ease of access here and you can see here we are and you can see the perfect outline of the fuchsia look at the leaves how well they've turned out and here's the other side of the i think you can page here the lovely outline i also use cosmos leaves the same way now we're getting quite a little bit of pile of used leaves here and i know what you're going to say what will happen if i use these on my tea dyed paper or my coffee dyed paper well no panic this is what it looks like done on tea dyed paper and see slight result on one side and then that would be beautiful in a botanical journal absolutely beautiful now what else haven't we tried um the cosmos now i wouldn't run a whole cosmos flower through i'll try it with some of the i just put a scattering of the petals i can feel a dog hair coming out of the petal but never mind here we go and some of them are right way up and others are facing down to get that effect i'll do the sandwich again and through i just want to run them through once or twice unless you're finding it very hard to get a color out of them i wouldn't run them through any more than that and here we go we have our petals which we can remove and get a kind of a ghost print of the petal just quick if you can't be bothered with them drying the normal way or going to all the hassle of eco dyeing and i'll just go back and show you the first one so i feel the others like these were done in a hurry but you could you know make make a picture or rearrange everything a bit better i think if i could get tiny little ivy leaves they would look nice as well done around the edges so i leave you with that for a bit of for a bit of something to do and something to experiment with and as i said there's no pots no boiling no um taking up the stove or cooker top for three hours boiling something and it is paper this will only work on paper but um i did try i did try to do it on fabric but it wasn't it wasn't great and the trouble with fabric is it probably will get exposed to the sun but for stuff we're putting in your journal just give it a try and let me know how you get on and don't forget to do leaves like the cosmos that is a great little fellow and like the cosmos for you know extra effect and kind of more structure so thanks for watching thanks for listening enjoy yourselves bye

Channel: littlesnippets1

Views: 10,978

Keywords: #ecoprinting, #ecodyeing, #journalpages, #botanicaljournal, #flowercraft, #journalembellishments

Id: ZYe7cbBAVCU

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021