Pretty Green Pages swap

Autumn is knocking in the Northern Hemisphere, and while we still have plants we can gather to dye with, from the hedgerows, roadsides, or our gardens, we thought it a good idea to run this swap now.

Do you have any of the following growing in your area - Cow Parsley, Queen Anne's Lace, Elderberry leaves, Buddleia leaves and flowers, St. Johns Wort, Nettles, yarrow, juniper, onion skins, Marigold, or common Dandelion? Each of these plants when placed in a gentle simmering pot, will give us either yellows, yellowy greens or dark green, sometimes your water will make them browner or orangey so do not panic.

The object of this swap will be to dye ourselves some papers for our journals. Yes for our newer members, we are all supposed to me making ourselves a journal at least 5 x7 inches to place our swaps in, so this is a fun exercise that will provide us with some colourful pages, either to send out or write upon.

To obtain your colour, select your chosen plant, leaves or flower heads, and place in cold water immersing in an old pot - remember keep the pot only for dyeing in, so thrift store finds are good for this - slowly bring to simmer on your lowest heat, DO NOT BOIL - it may take up to an hour or longer, move the plant in the water with an old wooden spoon, and test to see if the colour has released. When it has, turn off the heat and place a lid on the pot and let it go cold. Pour the liquid into a flat container, immerse your chosen papers - try water colour paper, printing paper, airmail paper, note cards. Parsley will make a pale lovely green, Marigolds can be orangey yellow as can onion skins, Elder leaves are darker green. etc. once you have immersed your papers, lift out and dry on blotting paper like newsprint.
OR, put your dye liquid in a spray bottle and spritz your pages with the dye, let it dry and repeat as necessary to get the effect you want. I adore the parsley pages. Here is a link to show you what your journal may look like when combining pages together

For this swap, we shall make ourselves a collection of pretty dyed summery papers. Keep the heavier papers for yourself at home.

Due to the restrictions of the postal boycotts with the US at present, we are aiming to keep our swaps as thin as possible to avoid tariffs. So for this swap,

EITHER

send your partner one or two sheets of light airmail paper dyed in a standard sized envelope make sure it is thin and light.

OR

photograph your collection of pages, and share with your partner via an email,

with both types of sending, write about how you extracted your dye - how the process went for you and what you might try differently if anything.

simple clear video experiments blog post alternative methods but beautiful results As always, if you need information and any help, please contact one of us, Jane, Nickalli and Anna.