Incorporating Nature’s Art
As a creative I am constantly thinking of new things to craft. I love the process of creating, it is my driving force. My biggest issue is not being able to settle on just one thing. I am always looking to open new doors, you just never know what mysteries you will discover. The garden is such a wonderful source of inspiration. The intensity of the different colours and the formations of the plants are just incredible.
The images above are all from my extensive vegie garden. The veins on the leaves of the purple cabbage look like pathways across a landscape. The beautiful green Romanesco broccoli is a natural example of the Fibonacci sequence and fractals (each small piece looks like the whole). And who can resist the amazingly colourful Painted Mountain corn. The diverse range of brightly coloured kernels are just stunning. Looking at all of these, is it any wonder I spend what spare time I have out in the vegie patch enveloped in Nature’s own Art.
I am a self-confessed hoarder of nature’s goodies that have dried/dropped once their life force has been spent. I love to save little bits and pieces that I find for later (I just never know what they could become until that light of inspiration flicks on)!! Dried blooms once they have dropped, lovely coloured leaves, nuts, a perfect piece of wood, shells, nests, feathers and more.
One of my greatest passions is books. An avid reader and collector; be it old tomes that the covers are falling away from or pristine new pieces, I love them all (which is why I went on to create the hand-bound leather journals). Lately, my mind has been drifting to what I can do with some of these beautiful treasures from nature that I have carefully collected and stored. And books! Why not make my own recycled paper for some very exotic journals? With this thought bubbling away, I looked for paper making frames. I’m afraid woodworking, well, the cutting of wood, isn’t my thing. My pieces inevitably turn out ‘off’ somehow, so I have given up the idea that I can craft with wood! I’ll leave that to others who have mastered this artful practice.
Recycled paper preparation using some of the flora I have collected from the garden. I can’t wait to see how the paper turns out and what effect the different flowers and leaves will create.
It will be quite a long journey I feel, and I will probably need a large amount of patience. Making paper from scratch isn’t a quick process. But oh how delicious the cyclamen and orchid flowers I have collected will look within the feathery soft, pastel pages I am going to create. I can see them all now. Recycling and making use of Nature’s art to create one’s own art, is a wonderful way to honour Nature herself and all she brings to us.
Update to the original post. Here is the first batch of paper I have made. Pretty happy with the result, paper has come out a nice soft blue/grey and quite a nice thickness.
