Botanical Inks: Plant-to-Print Dyes, Techniques and Projects

by Babs Behan, Kim Lightbody (Photographer)

Learn how to transform foraged wild plants, plants, garden produce, and recycled food into dyes and inks with Botanical Inks. The book shows you how to extract environmentally sustainable color from the landscape and use it to create natural dyes for textiles, clothing, paper, and other materials. Botanical Inks covers dyeing and surface application techniques, including bundle dyeing, Shibori tie-dyeing, hapazome, indigo sugar vat dyeing, wood-block printing, screen printing, and more. Itt also shows you how to turn your new inks, dyes, and technique knowledge into wonderful projects, from a simple bundle-dyed a scarf to a block-printed tote bag.

The process of turning plants into print can help you reconnect with nature, find a creative outlet and develop a mindful sense of presence. It also promotes an awareness of sustainable practices and how to reduce our impact on the planet.

Genres: Art, Crafts, Nonfiction, Nature

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Ruth]

Excellent guide to all kinds of botanical dyeing.

[Lindsay]

The title is a bit misleading because I thought I was reading a book about botanical inks and eco printing. While a couple of ink recipes are offered in the book, the main subject is actually botanical dye's: step by step tutorials on how to color your fabrics at home.

The book has gorgeous photography and I really liked the chapter about indigo. She offers some fun projects too like tutorials on how to print petals on fabric, how to make a sleep mask, make paints. It sure sparked some inspiration.

I will read more about dyes and edit my rating of this book once I compared it to other books.

[Christine]

There are a lot of different plants that can be used to extract natural dye from. This book gives a lovely selection, and since it is an ebook, hyperlinks back to previous sections to give you instructions for various mordanting and setting methods. I'm not sure how this would fair as a physical book since you would need to flip back and forth between pages or have certain recipes copied down. If you are just getting into natural dyeing and want to play around with printed with natural dyes then this might be a good resource for you. If you are looking for natural inks that you can write with like an ink pen or quill, then there are one or two recipes in here for you. I found this interesting though I believe that the information can be better found through other resources. Decent book on natural dyeing.

[Anna Kasmir]

Botanical Inks is a brilliant resource to natural dyeing. I am a complete beginner, and Babs' explanations make it really easy to follow, and interesting to read too! I've had some really great results following her processes. Its a great all round book as it covers scouring and mordanting, different dye bath techniques, how to create dye baths and different projects too. She also has a list of really useful suppliers as well - making it super easy to start! I definitely recommend Botanical Inks.

[Tina]

Beautifully presented and wonderfully comprehensive.
Rich in colour, detail and simplicity.
Exquisite photography.
Great resource to have at hand.

[Michelle]

A great and useful book on natural dyes, mordants and types of material.
I found it more thorough than Modern Natural Dyer.

[Judith Greer]

Lots of amazing information. Loved it!!!

[Villa Lena]

Recommended by Chara leto

[Juli Anna]

A thorough guide.

[Liz Moffat]

Practical guide to natural dyeing and I actually had some great results with onion skins and cold water method. No additives were needed

[Nikki Buglass]

Have dipped (excuse the unintended pun) in and out of this since buying. Easy to follow, beautiful photography and well organised sections. One of my favourite books to refer to when dyeing and tinkering with pots and yarn.