Leafy prints

If you follow my work on here, you will know from time to time that I get very inspired by the lovely leaves of the macleaya cordata plants in our garden. I was sitting in the garden on Monday and the leaves in the sunshine looked like they had been dusted with fine gold mica powder, they had a gorgeous delicate sheen. I felt it was time for a creative leafy session. So on Monday I picked some leaves and inked the reverse sides with dye inks for some delicate leaf prints, using my Speedball brayer to gently press the detail into the paper. I used the plume poppy leaves, geraniums, hop leaves and ferns so ended up with some quite varied results. I sprayed some of the prints with walnut ink, my old glimmer mists and some Cosmic Shimmer sprays and I was really pleased with the way it made the ink bleed gently. I also added some leaf stamping on some of the pages. This was results of a couple of hours leaf printing.

I was really delighted with one of the prints that I will be keeping to make into a project just for me as it reminds me of that golden sheen on the leaves that inspired me in the first place.

I loved the way the gold spray collected in the veins of the leaf. If you click on the picture you can get a better look.

Here are a couple of the designs of card I made with the sheets of printing. The first uses a similar print to the one above. I lost the top of the print, so had to crop it a little. I added a DoCrafts sentiment and some Impression Obesssion die cuts in chocolate brown card.

These next two use one of the sheets like a masterboard and I used 3 x 3 inch squares to make the prints go as far as possible.

This panel used fern prints which I overstamped with the fern from the Chocolate Baroque Wild meadow set, using shades of Versafine ink. I added another DoCrafts sentiment and more of the IO leaf die cuts.

The second card uses the same sentiment and an Impression Obsession Gingko leaf die. I love Gingko leaves and I am hoping we can find space to plant a Gingko tree in our garden before too long. I added a little Vintage Photo DI to the edges of my leafy squares.

I was very pleased with how quickly these cards came together in the course of one evening once I had made the leafy prints and I still have plenty of material to make more cards and projects with.

Elaine