I've been lamenting the fact that while the entire rest of the southern hemisphere seems to have had a 'heatwave', summer in our little corner of Taranaki seems to have been hit & miss.
While others have moaned about 'climate change' making everything too hot, we have had shitty, windy days with ocean temps 15.7 degree celsius (ie very freakin could !) for weeks on end.

Although this has been blah for me it has been ideal for our native bush. All the plants are looking healthy & vibrant.
There have been masses of sweetly scented flowers on all our trees; some day pollinated, others night pollinated, & this means our insects are happy.
Harakeke flowers & pods, karamu berries & kawakawa fruit production this year is abundant which means the birds are also having an amazing summer.

Since December we have had the pleasure of watching twin ruru develop from fledgling to teenagers to adults, flocks of pīpīwharauroa visiting the kowhai trees, seen & heard many korimako, the tui haven't needed to be quite so territorial, the small birds such as riroriro & tauhou are plentiful, as are the finches.
Every being seems calm & happy.
It's been delightful.
I imagine all the creatures we don't see are having a great season too.

I have also taken advantage of the abundance & harvested for some ink & pigment making experiments.

In December I started with harakeke pods as they seemed even more abundant, attractive & diverse than last year.  
​There also seemed to be such an amazing variety of different coloured pods this year.
​I harvested some immature as well as mature pods as I wanted to see if I could obtain different coloured inks which reflected the different colours & characteristics of the pods. 
So far it seems to have been successful & I'll just keep testing the inks every now & then to check colour & light fastness.
I should probably tell you, altho it is obvious from the photos, that my initial ink making was specifically for using with a dip pen.
I also had a partially exhausted tanekaha leaf dye bath so I reduced that down to see what I might get.

The 2nd batch of pods were from a different part of our place & one specifically from the driveway as it was hanging over the road & bashing into the car as we drove past. 
This time I decided to use 30cm squares of various weight cotton fabric as the 1st filter cloths & squeezed the liquid through the pieces of cloth by hand.
​I'm interested to see if the difference in cloth colours remains with time & washing - or whether it will just gradually drift back to harkeke tannin brown.

I'm pretty excited about these inks as most of them seem to have a great consistency for using with my pointy pen.
Our birds are moulting at the moment so I'm collecting feathers to make quills . . . . I'll keep you posted on that one ;)

Next up was the fruit of my most loved NZ native plant, Kawakawa.
So plentiful that the birds were barely touching them which I took as a sign that it would be ok for me to gather a few to play with.
​Honestly, I have never, ever, seen so many fruit & my god, they smell divine !
Like a papaya with a hint of black pepper. 

The colour is the pulp, the little dot is the seed. The fruit crush super, duper easily & can be squashed through a sieve with minimal fuss & bother & the ink is fugitive ! 
​Everything I wrote a month ago has vanished from the page.

So in the end I dried some out on filter paper & resorted to science & modern technology.

I had read about a 'Golden' product GAC900 which is designed to be mixed with acrylic paints to create a textile paint which can be heat set. I'm not averse to all man-made chemicals & science* so I bought some & mixed it with a few of my pigments to see what I might be able to achieve.

Must admit I was surprised & really quiet in awe of how easy it is to use & how great it felt to be able to use my humble little scrapings, mouldy sludges & strange smelling fruit pulps into well pigmented textile paints.
 
I let them dry & left them sitting for 10 days or so & now they are ironed & sitting on the back of the couch in the studio, hanging out seeing what happens with time . . .  I'll keep you posted on this too ;)

I know I would be able to do this with both harakeke & tanekaha without the GAC900 as they are substantive dyes & dye cellulose fibre well. 
I also know I could probably use gum arabic &/or agar to thicken the ink to paint like consistency.
I plan to do some experimenting with that either during February or sometime in March, however I really, really, really want to be able to mono print kawakawa leaves & now I know it is possible.

Below is me having a bit of fun with harakeke 'ink' using the dried sediment from filtering one of the inks through fabric &using the 3 modifiers I have made; ash water, copper water & iron water (clear, blue & orange drops on the last photo)

This has been a fabulous year of explorations fuelled by the #our52weekproject on instagram, for which I chose #52weeksofbotanicals.

I deliberately chose this broad category as the umbrella to work under as most of my work revolves around botanicals simply because most of my world revolves around botanicals & I doubt that I'm going to leave the world of botanicals anytime soon.

My December explorations have looped back around to mono prints, but this time on muka paper. ha ! printing botanicals on botanicals & then stitching them seemed like the perfect experiment & it was.
Not all of the results are spectacular but that doesn't matter a tot as I've worked out a lot even with the limited work I have done.
​

I now know I can monoprint successfully using acrylic ink on muka paper.
The muka paper has a rough side & a smooth side & this affects the quality of the print with regards to line sharpness & detail.
I now know I can machine or hand stitch on the muka paper.
I successfully used both polyester thread & cotton thread for machine sewing & cotton embroidery thread for the hand sewing.

For the last week of the year I decided to do a little experiment with free motion embroidery/quilting on a reject kawakawa monoprint that I’ve had pinned to my wall for most of the year.
I have never done free motion embroidery before, nor quilting for that matter, so this was equal parts exciting & terrifying.
It was a lot of fun & now my mind is in hyper drive about the possibilities so I’m looking forward to coming back to this later this year.

It’s been a fantabulous year of botanical exploration & it has been absolutely amazing watching the other participants really hone their skills over the 12 months so if you’re on IG go check the hashtag #our52weekproject for everyone’s posts & specifcally #52weeksofbotanicals for mine.

New year calls for a new project & I'll let you know what that will be soon xx

At the beginning of the year Kristin Axtman, from Brooklyn Haberdashery, proposed a year long, creative project Instagram challenge called #our52weekproject.
The rules are guidelines & extremely flexible; you choose your own project, choose a unique hashtag & post to IG once each week.
​That's it !
So simple & so attractive.  
Attractive to me because I like to experiment with different techniques & different media AND I like to have a point of focus & a deadline, albeit self imposed & arbitrary - basically it just helps me get shit done !

Selecting a unique hashtag which relates to your project is a brilliant idea for posting to IG as it means all your own posts will be in one place. 
I've chosen the general theme of 'botanicals' which will allow me to experiment & explore many different things & I'll be using the hashtag #52weeksofbotanicals.

January has been an exploration of mono printing & embellishing the mono prints with embroidery.
I've been making direct prints of kawakawa leaves (piper excelsum) onto calico using water based fabric paint which is heat set by ironing before I add some embroidery stitches. 

On a side note, last year I started 'a thing', guidelines for me to work under, basically, to use readily available materials, which makes things accessible to me & it also keeps the cost down.
This month's project has been a great example of that.
The leaves grow in my back yard.
The fabric, fabric paints & embroidery cotton are sold in my local Spotlight store & are affordable.
The make up sponges I've used to apply the paint I bought in my local supermarket.
I found a superb resource book at my local library.

Below is a gallery of photos which show the process I've used.
​I think piccies are easier to flick through then wading through a sea of words.

I am incredibly excited about this year long project as it will provide a year's worth of motivation & continual exploration.
Continual exploration ensures I will be able to approach my creative year with enthusiasm, excitement & energy.
I look forward to trying new things, learning new things & hell, I'll probably even take myself out & meet new people !
I've said it before & I'll say it again, I love Instagram & this is why.