Duoprinting with Chlorophyll

 I am hosting a Dare to Get Dirty Challenge at Splitcoaststampers today, and my challenge is called "Duoprinting with Chlorophyll". What is that you ask, it is the making of two prints by using vegetation that you find in your yard. If you have never done this before, you are in for a treat. 

Duoprinting is the name of the technique, i.e. two prints with one plant, and the Chlorophyll is the pigment found in plant life, which makes this process possible. And, in order not to have to do the pressing by hand, a Cuttlebug, Platinum, Big Shot is a good thing to have.

To start you will need your leaves, plants, flowers, etc., two sheets of watercolour paper for each plant and paper towel or a sheet of photocopy paper. If the plant you are using is not watery, you can use heavy (110lb or greater) cardstock, which I have done for several of my examples.

You fold the paper towel in half, place a piece of watercolour paper or cardstock inside, place the leaf, then the other piece of printing paper and fold the paper towel over, like a book.

Above is an example of the positive and negative produced from one leaf set of a Peony. It is done using Neenah Classic Crest Solar White Cardstock 110lb. 

For the set below I used the flowers of Ladies Mantle. I love these prints, and I was surprised when I saw the colour of them. One print is done using watercolour paper and the right print is on cardstock.

In this picture below on the left is the large hairy leaf of the Ladies Mantle done on the negative, which was far more interesting than the positive. To the right is more of the Peony leaves.

And finally, the positive and negative of Lemon Balm. Once it goes through the pressing it losses its crinkly edging, but you can see them where the darkish marks are. Below is the positive, and the card I gave to my friend Ann, who kindly brought me all these leaves to explore with. So many thanks to Ann for making this all possible. I made these cards for her and put them in a little bag that I also made to thank her. On the envelopes I made sure "From my Garden" was stamped on each along with a garden symbol stamp.

I apologize, some of my pictures are very dark ... it was one of those days when I photographed everything.

And this is the negative of the Lemon Balm.

And finally, here is a video with Lydia from Understandblue and Splitcoaststampers, showing the process.

I hope you have enjoyed this post today, and I do hope you will give this fun technique a try.