My friend  Louise Wells didn’t just bring delicious smoked salmon blinis to Melbourne Cup lunch last Tuesday.  She brought a large bag of garden cuttings.  Among them, vine leaves.

So I had a little go at bundling some of them with silk pre-soaked in strong iron water and then simmered for two hours in a rich black pot of iron and onion skins.

The result is not spectacular but it does encourage me to experiment further until I find a way to get really good prints.

Preparation for the building of the studio continues.  I have just pruned back all the planting along my battle axe driveway  to protect it from the builder’s heavy vehicles.  So in the same pot and using similar pre-soaked silk i also bundled some geranium leaves and flowers.

I suspect that these prints are very dependent on the heavy iron dosing but will now try them with steaming.

The print from underneath the geranium leaf

The print made from the top of the leaf