More Eco-printing

My first pages of eco-printing, using boiling water and raw vegetables, were less exciting than I had hoped.  The onion skins gave the best result, but the vibrant chard, cabbage and red onion just dissolved. While looking into eco-printing online, I came across the technique of flower pounding, which involves using fresh flowers or plants and a hammer.  This caused me to wonder if I could use some kind of pressure, like that created by a die-cutting machine, to get the same results.  Here's what happened:

I cut thin strips of both red cabbage and radicchio. And I found a large bouquet of flowers on sale. I used my Big Shot die cutting machine -- limiting the size of the pages to 6" X 9".  These pages will be bound for a book, so I folded a 9" x 12" piece in half.  Once I arranged the leaves and flowers, I folded the paper, and ran it through the BIg Shot.  It was surprisingly messy!  I'm pretty sure that this machine was not meant for pressing plants.

Here are some test strips, using rose petals, parsley, chrysanthemum petals and radicchio.

Detail of rose leaf -- the leaf itself did not print, but it picked up the color that was released from the petals.

Lilies, parsley and dyed baby's breath:

Parsley, rose petals and mum petals:

Detail of parsley leaves:

In all I printed 24 pages, and plan to try more. The process has that element of unpredictability that I really like having in all my work.