New Pages for a New Book

I am planning a new embroidered bookcover to be constructed during the Autumn term of the creative bookbinding class I go to.  To this end this week I have been boiling watercolour paper and plant material in a pan with white vinegar and water.  These are some of the pages that I have produced.  It has not been an easy task as I am still suffering from a dreadful cold/flu and at this time of year there is not a lot of suitable plant material around in the garden.

India Flint it the person who inspired me to have a go at this technique.  I used mainly onion skins to produce the background colour, both white and red.  If you look closely you can see a pansy and honesty in this photograph. There is also an article in the Summer 2013 'Pages' magazine produced by Cloth Paper Scissors.

I found an old piece of hydranga flower head over the other side of the stream, obviously some lazy gardener further up the stream had thrown all his pruning debris in the stream to get rid of it. The flowers were nicely skeletonised and have worked well on some of the pages.

I used purple and yellow crocus, ivy leaves, primroses of various colours and anything else I thought might leave an image. Usually leaves work well but there are none out yet.

This last picture was from the first batch I boiled, for which I did not use onion skins, and, as you can see, the colours are very pale.  The brown came from some dried leaves I had saved during the summer with the intention of making a concertina book - which I never got round too.