Shelby (she/her): Okay, so today we're going to be teaching you how to flower press and eco print.

Shelby (she/her): And also some crafts that you can do without pressing so this can be with flowers that you've picked or far as it someone's giving you.

Shelby (she/her): And then we'll be doing eco printing, which is the process of dying fabric with the pigments from plants and we'll be talking about two different methods that you can do that with.

Shelby (she/her): So if you're doing these crafts along with us. That's great. You can also just use this as a tutorial for the future, if you're not going to be doing them or you don't have the materials today.

Shelby (she/her): Yeah, so we'll be doing three different crafts. You can do some of them or all of them with us, whatever you want.

Shelby (she/her): Okay. Okay. So we're going to start with the land acknowledgement that Justin's going to do.

Justin Haggard - he/him: Yeah, so we'd like to give a land acknowledgement as an organization within a land grant institution, Dig: The Campus Garden Coalition at UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, South Channel Islands).

Shelby (she/her): Okay, so I have notes over here on a computer. So you'll see me looking over a lot.

Shelby (she/her): But what you'll need for this workshop. First we're going to do eco printing. So for that you're going to need fresh leaves or flowers or any kind of plant. But those ones aren't going to be pressed. So you want fresh ones.

Shelby (she/her): And then fabric, preferably that's made out of natural fibers. So like cotton or linen or silk or wall. So, this can be something like a canvas tote bag or like a cotton t shirt and then you'll also need a hammer for the method that we're doing it and then to make pressed flowers. 

Shelby (she/her): If you haven't already pressed them you'll need either a book and some parchment paper, or you'll need an iron, some parchment paper, and a paper towel, depending on which method you choose. And we'll talk about both methods.

Shelby (she/her): For pressed flower stickers, you're going to need pressed flowers or leaves or also any other kind of plant, parchment paper, and packing tape.

Shelby (she/her): And then for bottles and jars that we're going to decorate with pressed flowers. You'll need pressed flowers or leaves, Mod Podge, a paintbrush, and then a clean glass bottle or jar or really any kind of glass container with any labels or stickers removed.

Shelby (she/her): So eco printing is the process of transferring the shapes and the pigments of plants on to cloth. There are two ways to do it. 

Shelby (she/her): One of them you can see in the picture on the top right is you basically place the cloth down, you put the plants on the cloth and then you wrap it around a stick and you tie it on there and then you boil that stick. 

Shelby (she/her): And when you unroll it, it will like have the prints of all of the plants on it and we're not going to be doing that method because that would be kind of hard to demonstrate, but the second method is where you hammer the pigment out of the plants onto a cloth. 

Shelby (she/her): So it's a little more violent but in Japan, it's called hapazome if I'm pronouncing that right. If anyone knows that I'm not, please feel free to call me up.

Shelby (she/her): But yeah, so let's get on to it. So, for the hapazome method, which is what we'll be doing. And again, you're going to need fresh flowers and plants that are not dried, a light colored fabric made of natural fibers and a hammer.

Shelby (she/her): So first, if you can all see my tutorial screen, you're going to want to lay your fabric on a hard, flat surface. So I have mine on a carpet mostly to make it so it's not so loud and I'm not like blowing your guys' eardrums out with a hammer.

Shelby (she/her): But underneath that it's hardwood floor. So that should be good. And then you want to secure it in place which you can even just do by holding it down. 

Shelby (she/her): Whoops, you'll place your flowers or your plants underneath the fabric. So I'm doing this on a canvas tote bag and I've already done, I've already practiced on it. 

Shelby (she/her): So I'm just adding another leaf, because I don't want to, you know, you guys don't want to watch me for like an hour, making entire bag. So inside of this I have wax paper, you can, if it's a double sided thing like t shirt or a tote bag.

Shelby (she/her): Unless you want to print on both sides, you want to put something in between. So like a piece of cardboard or a book or something. I would say parchment paper, but I'm not sure if it would soak through the fabric so wax paper might be better.

Shelby (she/her): And then hopefully you can see a little bit through that's kind of the hard part is that you can't see it. So hopefully you can kind of see where you leave is and then hold it down so that you you know where it is. You want to hold it down so it doesn't move.

Shelby (she/her): Some people do like if you're just doing like a piece of fabric and if it's literally just like a fabric scrap some people will put the put the flowers or leaves inside it. So when you hammer it makes like a mirror image when you unfold it.

Shelby (she/her): And you can just hold the leaf down.

Shelby (she/her): Which I mean you have to be very careful. So you don't hit your hands, but you could also use like tacks to pin it down or you could tape it down from the underside of the leaf because you don't want to be hammering the tape itself.

Shelby (she/her): So you want to hammer very small areas at a time. So I doubt you can see like the silhouette of the leaf but I usually start at the very tip of the leaf.

Shelby (she/her): That's really loud. Can someone tell me if that's--

Sophie (she/hers): Like we can't hear it all.

Shelby (she/her): Okay, cool.

Shelby (she/her): So I start at the very tip of the leaf and you want to do it in very small areas at a time to get like the fullest picture, otherwise you'll have a lot of gaps where it's just like plain tote bag which unless you're going for that.

Shelby (she/her): You see the like corner of my hammer, that works a little bit better for me than just like hitting it flat on.

Shelby (she/her): Okay, this is not working for some reason. So I'm gonna try a different corner.

Shelby (she/her): Okay, so you can see I'm kind of starting to get a little bit this does take a long time. So I don't know if I will do the whole leaf. Maybe I'll just show you guys see at the idea because it does take kind of a long time to get the full picture of the leaf.

Shelby (she/her): But I'll keep doing something so you can see a little bit more.

Shelby (she/her): It's a little bit spotty. And it is kind of hard to get like a full picture but that's kind of how this one works is you never really get like a full picture. It's kind of like messy and.

Shelby (she/her): But it's so cute. And the thing about this is that it is literally smashing your leaf into like a bunch of pieces so you kind of want to do it, small areas at a time because if you do it in like a lot of different areas you smash a lot of different parts. And then if you try to fill in the gaps, you're going to have like a lot of areas that don't even have leaf underneath them anymore.

Shelby (she/her): So I don't think I should do the whole thing, because I think it's going to take kind of a long time. But basically, when it's done, you'll get something that looks like this and some notes on doing it with flowers:

Shelby (she/her): When I did this was a purple flower. It doesn't really hold its shape very well. And actually now that I think about it, it was a red flower so the color definitely changed and that will depend on like what kind of fabric you're using. 

Shelby (she/her): So if you're using, I mean, like a light colored fabric will work best, but if it's like slightly different colored it's going to change the color of your flower, probably. And same thing with this one. This was like a piece of lavender.

Shelby (she/her): And it turned out, kind of like brown so it's kind of hit and miss. You'll see like how it works out. This one was like a very thin leaf. So it didn't show up very well. The ones that I'm doing it with now are really thick and I feel like.

Shelby (she/her): The leaves definitely worked the best.

Shelby (she/her): Let me see if they have any other notes on this.

Shelby (she/her): One note the room will smell like plants. It does smell like plants right now. So if you have a plant that smells really bad, I would not recommend doing it inside.

Shelby (she/her): Because the last time I did this, my room smelled like plants like all day afterwards. So you definitely don't want like a really gross smelling plant to do this with.

Shelby (she/her): Um, yeah, so.

Shelby (she/her): Next we're going to talk about flower pressing which Sophie is going to give us like a short history on.

Shelby (she/her): And yeah, but before that. Does anybody have any questions about this one?

Shelby (she/her): Oh, I forgot. I have some pictures of what it can also look like if you do it with different flowers and things.

Sophie (she/hers): So yeah, the flower pressing activity is pretty ancient, people have been doing this kind of thing for 3000 years which is such a long time. So, certainly not a new practice.

Sophie (she/hers): And even Japanese artists in the 1500s began Oshibana.

Sophie (she/hers): So making pictures and that kind of thing and just using the nature around them to create art, which is pretty cool and in terms of globalization of course, this practice became more widespread.

Sophie (she/hers): People in the Victorian era in the West used the flower pressing for kind of like making mementos and saving things like say they got a flower from someone that they loved and they wanted to keep it to keep the memory. So they would press them for reasons like that. And it just sort of became a hobby.

Sophie (she/hers): And in addition to the craft. It's also used in logical practices for documenting different species and that kind of thing. So still something that happened today.

Sophie (she/hers): And these are some pictures of the Oshibana. And so you can see the kind of art landscapes that they would make sure I think is pretty cool.

Sophie (she/hers): And this is botanical scrapbooks and things that people in the West kind of started to use flower pressing for so you can see in the top right there that people were using it for taxonomy purposes like labeling what certain plants are so.

Sophie (she/hers): Pretty interesting practice.

Shelby (she/her): So now we'll talk about how you compress your flowers. So there's two different methods.

Shelby (she/her): The most common one is just laying them in a book which some of you might have already done before.

Shelby (she/her): So basically, if you care about the book. You want to put some kind of paper into the book to protect the pages when you press it because pressing flowers can sometimes get messy.

Shelby (she/her): So I just use parchment paper and I fold it in half and then you place your leaves or your flowers inside and you kind of arrange them however you want them to look when they're pressed.

Shelby (she/her): Sometimes if you just press them, they can kind of form like weird shapes. I don't know if you can see like this white flower.

Shelby (she/her): It kind of blends in with the page, but it doesn't look exactly like it did when I pressed it so you kind of if you want it to, like, be in a specific shape where you want it to be like I guess from like a specific view, like if you're looking top down at a rose and you want to preserve it looking that way you kind of just have to be careful and like watching it as you close it.

Shelby (she/her): So once you close it you want to play something pretty heavy on top of it.

Shelby (she/her): I just kept mine under like a storage bin that was full of stuff for about a week. So you want to leave it for seven to 10 days.

Shelby (she/her): And you want to do it until the flowers are completely flat and they're totally dry. So if you open it and they're sticking to the pages, they're probably not totally dry yet and you should leave them for a while.

Shelby (she/her): So in my experience some flowers definitely press better than others in a book, so I had trouble with flowers like sunflowers were like the part where it attaches, I don't know the scientific term or anything, but the part where it attaches to the petals, like the green part, do you know what I'm talking about?

Shelby (she/her): So since that part is really thick and it's connected to like the center of the sunflower, it's really hard to press it completely flat. So when I pressed those the center just kind of stayed how it was. And all of the petals fell off. 

Shelby (she/her): So I don't think it's impossible to press things like sunflowers. I just think you definitely have to cut them. You have to cut the stems like as short as you can to get it so that you can press it flat.

Shelby (she/her): So those are like the main ones that I had trouble with pretty much all other like flowers and plants you can press pretty easily. I would say like thicker leaves and stuff will take longer to press.

Shelby (she/her): But yeah, you can pretty much press anything. There's also a method which I won't be demonstrating but you can press them with an iron. If you're short on time.

Shelby (she/her): So you lay a parchment paper down you lay all of your flowers on top of it and then you put another piece of parchment paper on top.

Shelby (she/her): And to kind of protect it from the heat. You want to put like a paper towel over the top layer of parchment paper.

Shelby (she/her): And then on a really low heat setting you want to press the flowers and leaves.

Shelby (she/her): With an iron for 10 to 15 seconds, give or take. So if it's really like not pressing and you think it needs more time, then you can give it more time.

Shelby (she/her): The only thing is, it is possible to burn the flowers, the turn, kind of like a grayish color. So you don't want to do it for too long, and you definitely want to be like looking at them and making sure that you're not burning them.

Shelby (she/her): And then once you're done. They're going to be what because it kind of like presses all of the juice out since they're fresh flowers and you want to take the top layer parchment paper off and leave them up to drive for a while.

Shelby (she/her): Yeah, so I don't know if it was when I when I tried this method I use the yellow flowers and I'm not sure if it was that it burned them or if it's just because they were like light colored flowers or something. But when I press them only for like 10 to 15 seconds all the petals terms like this grayish brown color.

Shelby (she/her): So I can't really say whether that was like them burning or like something else, but you just want to be really gentle with them because they are very fragile.

Shelby (she/her): So next we'll go into our second craft which Sophie is going to demonstrate making pressed flower stickers.

Sophie (she/hers): So you have to bear with me. I don't have as much of a setup as a Shelby's got going. But let me turn my background.

Sophie (she/hers): Got my paper here.

Sophie (she/hers): Got some glasses that have been holding it down.

Sophie (she/hers): And like that. So can you guys kind of see the flowers that are in there.

Kyros Yip (he/him): Yeah.

Sophie (she/hers): Alright. Cool, so basically I have been pressing them for a little less than a week and these ones are super thin so they turned out flat.

Sophie (she/hers): In a shorter amount of time, then something that might be thicker and waxy wouldn't.

Sophie (she/hers): But basically for this, you're going to need your flowers, parchment paper, scissors and packing tape. So not that many items and hopefully things you would have around.

Sophie (she/hers): So first I'm going to cut a piece of tape off that's sort of around the size of one of these flowers.

Sophie (she/hers): And then I will place it on top of the top piece of parchment paper.

Sophie (she/hers): Now, I will take the flower.

Sophie (she/hers): Carefully put it on top of the tape.

Sophie (she/hers): A better picture of what that flower looks like, it's nice and purple.

Sophie (she/hers): Now I'm going to take another piece of tape and then for demonstration purposes I'll cut around the flower.

Sophie (she/hers): So, I hope you guys were able to see that. Okay.

Sophie (she/hers): Alright. So for anyone who's watching, I'm going to put the sticker on my water bottle to test it out.

Sophie (she/hers): OK, so now the parchment is off.

Charlotte -she/her: So cool.

Sophie (she/hers): Yeah, so it's as you saw this was my first time trying it. It's super easy and cooler than any other stickers because you made it. And it's most natural so yeah.

Sophie (she/hers): Right, thank you Sophie. Here's some pictures of what they should look like, or could look like.

Shelby (she/her): So now we'll do our last craft, which is decorating bottles and jars or really just any containers with pressed flowers. So this definitely works best with smaller pressed flowers and plants and also thinner ones because most containers that you would be doing it in, unless it's like a box, they will have like curved edges. 

Shelby (she/her): So if it's really thick it's going to be hard to get the leaf to stick or flower to stick like to the curve of the jar. It'll probably like stick up on the edges. 

Shelby (she/her): So it's not impossible but you should probably use really thin ones or just a lot of small ones. So you'll need those pressed flowers and then Mod Podge, a paintbrush, and your bottle or jar.

Shelby (she/her): So first, you'll want to clean the container with soap and water and take off any stickers or labels that are on it.

Shelby (she/her): I'm pretty sure you can just do that if it's like if it's really hard to get the label off. You can usually just soak it in warm water for a while and it'll come off by itself.

Shelby (she/her): So this one is also pretty easy.

Shelby (she/her): First you want to pick which flowers you're going to do. So I'm probably going to do some of the smaller ones that I have here.

Shelby (she/her): And some inner leaves so you can see how like this leaf bends really easily, whereas like, sorry technical difficulties, whereas, like this one, like will break in half if you bend it.

Shelby (she/her): So you definitely want them to be like very like, oh, okay. Okay. Awesome. I didn't mean to do that. But obviously, you shouldn't bend them too much but you definitely want thinner ones so that they can, like, go against the curve of like a jar or bottle or something.

Shelby (she/her): So you want to paint a layer of Mod Podge that's like about as big as your flower is.

Shelby (she/her): So that will all stick down.

Shelby (she/her): That's good. You don't have to do it super thick or anything.

Shelby (she/her): Very gently take your flower and stick it to the Mod Podge.

Shelby (she/her): Yeah, so you stick it there and you want to make sure all the edges are pressed flat and then you'll just wait for it to dry for a minute.

Shelby (she/her): Before you cover it with another layer and then that's all that you have to do.

Shelby (she/her): So if it doesn't easily stick on its own you might have to like hold it down. Well, it's trying just to make sure that it all sticks down.

Shelby (she/her): Yeah, so also you want to make sure that you wait for it to dry. Because if you brush, well, you want to make sure that it's fully dry and you also want to make sure that you don't have a brush that's like really abrasive.

Shelby (she/her): Because flowers, again, are very fragile. So if you were to brush this too early, you'll actually brush off some of the petals with it. So I have an example of how I did that, I don't know if you can see that because the light is kind of blocking it but um.

Shelby (she/her): Yeah, I don't think you can see.

Shelby (she/her): But anyways, I basically like brushed the petals away because I didn't wait for it to dry long enough so you definitely want to wait for it to dry.

Shelby (she/her): Which, this one is not dry yet. And then you'll just repeat and cover it with as many flowers as you want to.

Shelby (she/her): So we'll just wait a second for this to dry.

Shelby (she/her): And then like once you have a jar or a bottle or a container that's covered in all of these flowers you can use it for like all kinds of different things and it looks super cute. You could use it for storing food or you could use it for saving seeds to garden with.

Shelby (she/her): You could use it for saving your compost scraps or as you can see in these pictures, some people put tea lights in them which looks super cute. And then it's like a little candle and it all shines through. And then some people made some bowls and coasters. 

Shelby (she/her): So you could do it like dishware, with any kind of dishware and then you'll have like very unique plates and glasses and bowls and things.

Shelby (she/her): And you could also make like a reusable water bottle with this. So there's a lot of different uses for it.

Shelby (she/her): And it's just a good way to save flowers from your garden or that someone's given you or anything like that. So now this one has dried.

Shelby (she/her): So I'm going to paint over it.

Shelby (she/her): And really, I mean, I think the second layer of mod podge will protect it. But you don't even necessarily need it more than anything, it just kind of makes it shiny. Um, but, yes, you can do that. And then you can add some more.

Shelby (she/her): Of these purple flowers which when I picked they smell like skunk, which is really gross. They're very cute and I wouldn't have expected that but not a good one to eco print with because it will make your room smell like skunk.

Shelby (she/her): So you can have more, and then you could like, cover the entire bottle and it would look super cute. So yeah, that is that.

Shelby (she/her): That's all that we had today. So we'd really appreciate your feedback on our workshops.