StudioPetaBooks

Gardener, Ecoprinter & Bookbinder

Welcome! I’m a passionate gardener and I use the flowers I grow in my garden and the leaves I forage in my favourite green spaces to create ecoprints – also known as botanical contact prints – on paper. I’m also a bookbinder and I transform my one-of-a-kind prints into hand bound journals. 

So how do I capture the colours in flowers and leaves on paper? Simply put, I arrange plant materials between damp sheets of paper that have been soaked in water and alum. Then I stack the pages, press them with a heavy weight and steam them. Afterwards, I rinse, dry and iron each page. The dyes and pigments are trapped on the paper and what's left of the plants goes into my compost heap to nourish next year's garden.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Not all plants print, not all papers cooperate, and the colours and patterns depend on the variety and combination of leaves and flowers I use as well as the time of year. But, most importantly, all the colours in my prints come from plants – I don’t use synthetic dyes, inks or paints – and every print is one of a kind.

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