Emily Neuburger, MAT, MS, LMHC

Nature Printing :: pine cones & rose buds

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With camp and our first summer adventure behind us, this week marked the first of our slow-to-rise,  meandering collection of summer days.   Now that life is slow paced and both children are roaming close by, we’re having a hand printing camp of sorts.   The plan is for us to hand print with a bunch of different found objects (both natural and not), and I am going to do my best to document our printing adventures here. 
I love that part of the artistic process is spent gathering, pondering, guessing, and eying our surroundings in new ways.   A nice little perk is that the objects we printed with ended up looking beautiful dressed in their new colors.  I kind of want them to hang out in a little dish so I can continue to look at them.
I’ll admit to also hoping that some of our prints will end up as new art for our living room.  I’ll keep you posted on that.
Today’s materials:
dried rose buds 
tiny pine cones
acrylic craft paint
Color Boxink pads
I used a tiny pine cone for the blue print and a dried rose bud for the reddish orange print.  In order to get them to print like this, I used a sharp knife to cut off their tips.
 

 More dried rose bud prints.  Don’t they look like miniature roses?

For this pine cone technique, I covered the outside in ink and rolled it with my finger.  Place a piece of cardboard covered with a thin wrinkle free cloth underneath your printing paper.  This will help the printing process.

 Don’t they look like fish scales? Chick and I think so.

A little crafting with kids tip ::  Spreading out a big piece of kraft paper for projects is a great way to encourage experimentation. You can lay it on top of whatever kind of printing surface you wish to print on.  It gets kids focusing on the process rather than the finished product.  I think it kind of emphasizes the beauty of practice prints and smudges. 

xo e

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