Playing with Eco Dye

 It has been so long since I posted, I have been away for about six weeks in the US, I went for the IAPMA Congress that was held in conjunction with Friends of Dard Hunter at the Morgan Conservatory. I spent a couple of week before the conference visiting New York, Boston and Washington, just as well for me that I went there BEFORE rather than after, so sorry to hear about the devastation caused by Sandy. I had a week where I visited Cincinnati and Chicago then flew to San Francisco where I did a class with Karen Hanmer on making a triangle book at the San Francisco Center for the Book. I met lots of papermakers and book artists in the last part of my trip (the first part was with hubby so limited to three visits) and visited many art museums and galleries, saw some fabulous art.

India Flint taught a pre conference workshop on dyeing paper with leaves and rust and I saw what the participants had done in class and many of my local friends have been eco dyeing so in between long bursts at the computer I bundled up a range of leaves and onion skins and cooked them up with a few rusty nails and bits and pieces. Here are a few of the resulting papers, not sure how I'll use them but I did find it addictive.

I arrived home in time to help set up the Papermakers of Victoria exhibition at Open Drawer (it is on until 2 December) and we hosted members of PAGE to a day of papermaking, folding and printmaking at the Bundoora Stables. This week I have started work on putting the IAPMA Bulletin together so needed a bit of a break from the computer, hence the dyeing (and cooking up some montbretia, pond weed, red hot poker leaves and yucca for my next project!) But I'd better get back to the Bulletin!

Dried bluegum leaves and some daphne and mulberry paper that went in the vat too

some of the sheets with gumleaves and onion skin and the thread used to tie all together

onion skin and fern