Printing with Collard Greens Update

Lynda

Apr 14

Two years ago I posted about printing with collard greens on this post. I'm revisiting this printing because I'll be teaching at a kids' summer camp, and wanted to get in some practice.

Since collards aren't in season around here yet, I bought some at the store. When you are looking for any leaves to print, make sure they have nice veins. These two were really nice.

To keep it simple for the class, I'll be just using three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. As with regular leaf printing, I dabbed textile paints on the back side of the leaf. I'm using the daubers I made, but any kind of sponge can be used. Here is my tutorial on making the daubers.

Here is the finished leaf.

The leaf is placed paint side down on the fabric.

Since we no longer get a newspaper, I used packing paper we received in packages to cover the leaf. Normally I'd use a brayer to roll over the paper to make sure the leaf prints. However, I don't have enough brayers to go around for the class, so I wanted to experiment without that tool. I used my hand to smooth down the paper over the leaf.

And when I lifted up the leaf, here is my print.

I'm printing on a natural colored cotton fabric similar to what we will be printing on in the class. Each of the kids will get a backpack made of a similar type fabric which they will decorate on the first day of camp.

Here is a sample of how their back pack might look with these collards.

And since I've been wanting to do this forever, I printed the leaves on a t-shirt for me. That was so much fun! If you want to see the actual process of leaf printing, check out my old leaf printing video on YouTube here.

Since collards won't be in season for the class, I've experimented with a couple leaves that might be. I'll be blogging about them soon.

The iris parade has started with this dwarf, Riveting, being in the lead. She's a week early this year. I doubt the others will start to bloom for a couple weeks.