Printing with Botanicals by Birgit Koopsen

TIP: Make sure the layer of gold paint is really thin. This will make it easier to remove the paint from the areas around the leaves and will result in a clean print.

In this reel, Birgit is using a wax crayon to rub over some leaves. The wax will create a resist layer for the acrylic paint on the plate which allows you to create a resist print.

TIP: You can do this with any color crayon – the crayon color will not affect the color of the print-that will be the color of the paint you choose for the first layer. But, if you give it a little bit of thought, you might pick a specific color, clean off the rubbing after printing and use the rubbing in your art too 😉

In this reel, Birgit colored the flowers using acrylic paint and a brush. Of course you can use a variety of sizes of flowers and different colors for each flower if you like.

TIP: Dab off the paint from the flower in between stamping on the plate. The less paint there is on the flower, the more it will pick up from the plate and give you crisper images.

In this print Birgit used PanPastel instead of acrylic paint to color the flowers. PanPastels are easy to blend and give a softer look than acrylics. If you don’t have PanPastels at hand, you might want to try eyeshadow instead!

Here a real flower was used. If you have to buy flowers it might be too expensive and maybe feel like a waste using them for gel printing. But often when you have a bouquet of flowers that’s withered there is at least one or two flowers that are still good enough to work with. They are your sign to do some flower printing!