Day 10 already!
Today is all about leaves, maple leaves that is. I "borrowed" some from the neighbour's tree to do some printing. These spring leaves were still very soft and thin; if you get them later in the year it's much easier to work with them.

On a 6x6 white painting card:



The leaves were coated with wax in different colours with the iron . Then placed wax-side down on the card. Piece of Kleenex over top and ironed/printed. Be careful not to wriggle your iron too much!
If there is still a bit wax left after the print you can print of a second time (see top right corner).

As I had a couple of small wooden panels coated with wax from yesterday I decided to experiment a bit. I reheated the wax with the propane torch and firmly pressed the leaf into the wax. I think I even used a brayer to get even pressure (put a piece of non-stick paper between the brayer and the leaf).
With the leaf still in place I added a thin layer of wax all around the leaf to capture the outline. Then I carefully pulled up the leaf. It did not even break!

With the leaf removed I fused the newly applied wax and ended up with a kind of halo around the outline, really cool!

I dug out the texture a bit with a sharp instrument, then filled it with pigment stick. Excess was wiped off with Kleenex: a messy affair!
The last step was brushing on some antique magic powder. You can hardly see it on the photo, but is has a nice effect.










I did the same on another panel, but this one had lots of black wax on it (remnants of a crow, that did not turn out well!).
Same technique as above. Instead of filling in the veins I used the magic powder to enhance the texture.








Now I had several leaves with wax from the wooden panel on them and I decided to print those off on a black card. It worked out quite well.

Writing down the working method in detail will really help me later. Sometimes you're just so busy trying things out that in the end you don't know anymore how you achieved a particular effect.

I'm pleased with today's work and I also worked a bit on two larger panels.




Talk to you tomorrow,

Thea


P.S. If you have joined recently: you can see the reports of the previous days on my blog.