Plant prints make beautiful summer projects

Printing plant material is a simple technique that gives fantastic results. With a hammer and some interesting foliage and flowers, you can actually make a print of the plant on paper or fabric. It's amazing!

Finished prints can be used for countless craft projects. Cut them out and mount them in frames, attach them to a pretty background for great summer greeting cards. Use them to make a beautiful cover for your gardening journal or try the craft below and enjoy a trio of pretty summer candle holders.

What you need

Plant print candle sleeves

Collecting your materials: Choose and pick from your garden or yard some fresh leaves with interesting patterns (I used raspberry leaves, bleeding heart foliage and a crimson maple leaf for the craft shown). For flower prints, pick flatter flowers like pansies or violas, for example. You will need heavier paper, such as sketching or watercolour paper, plus a hammer, paper towel and a flat board. For the candle holders, pick up three cylindrical glass candle holders, some natural paper for the backgrounds and double-sided tape. Instead of scissors, I used cotton swabs dipped in water to "cut" all of the paper.

Step One: Trim away any parts of the plant material that you don't want to print. Put a sheet or two of paper towel on top of the flat board. Set your heavy paper on top of this. Arrange the foliage wrong side down (the side with the veins should go face down on the paper). For flowers, do the opposite. Arrange them good side down facing the paper. Lay one layer of paper towel on top of the greenery.

Step Two: Gently and without moving the paper towel or plants, hammer on top. You should see the colour seep through the paper towel as you go. This will guide you and is why I recommend using one layer only. Continue hammering gently until you've "printed" the entire plant.

Step Three: Carefully remove the paper towel and peel away the plant. You should see a pretty print in its place. Often, wonderful colours will appear that you couldn't see on the plant. Repeat with the remaining plants. Play around with arrangements. Groups of three leaves are pretty. Ferns can be lovely. Have fun and prepare to be surprised by the results.

Step Four: To make sleeves for glass candle holders like those shown, use a cotton swab dipped in water to "cut" out around each print. Dip the swab and trace where you want to cut. Use quite a bit of water and allow it time to soak in. Gently pull along the area you've soaked. This will give your boarders a nice soft edge. For each print, I left a large boarder and cut it in a strip to wrap around the candle holder. Repeat for the remaining prints.

Step Five: You'll need a background paper for each print. I used natural paper for this. Cut the background paper larger than the print and long enough to wrap around the glass candle holder with a slight overlap. Again, I cut the paper using a wet cotton swab.

Step Six: Use double-sided tape to attach the print, centered, to its background. Wrap this around the candle holder and use double-sided tape at the overlap to hold the sleeve in place. Repeat, making sleeves for the remaining candleholders.

NOTE: Since the sleeves are made from paper, they won't survive in the great outdoors. If you use the candle holders outside, don't forget to bring them in!