Printing with Flowers

Grape Hyacinths..... so pretty, but so invasive.  These little bulb flowers were once planted in flower beds and are now all over our front lawn.

 Good thing I came up with a fun art project to put these to use!  My son had a great time smashing flowers with me :)

Materials:  

Flowers, grass, weeds- whatever kinds you like

heavy weight paper- I used 140lb watercolor paper

a sheet of regular printer paper

hammer (optional)

Step 1. Gather up and wash some flowers and grasses.  Just to make sure they will work on your nice paper, test them out on some scrap paper first.  I couldn't get leaves to work with this method, but try whatever you like!

Step 2:  Arrange your flowers and grasses on your nice heavy weight paper.

Step 3:  Place a regular sheet of printer paper on top of your arrangement- you can fold your printer paper in half if you like.

Step 4:  Without moving your flower arrangement, press the printer paper on top of it carefully, making sure to squish the juices and natural dyes out of the plants.  This is where you might need a hammer.  The grape hyacinths pressed easily with my fingers, but I had to pound the grasses to make any marks on the paper.

Step 5:  Lift the printer paper off and see the prints you made with the dyes of the flowers.  Remove the smashed plants and repeat the previous steps to add more to your artwork, if desired.  

Step 6: Some plant remnants may still stick to your paper, so let it dry and then scrape off the extra stuff.

Yea!  You're all done.  You can frame your artwork or make custom cards out of them!