Elegant Camouflage grew out of my insatiable love of the outdoors and foraging. Plants and their many uses have always intrigued me!
The process that we use to create our Elegant Camouflage is called Botanical Contact Printing. It is the use of foliage, contact, pressure then heat reacting with the tannins and pigments within the leaves. Different Mordants are also used to create different effects and colors.
So that basically means one of our scarf’s is dipped into a solution of a specific mordant. Then we lay it out, place the different foliage that we are using for the project down onto the fabric. This will depend upon whether the foliage prints by itself. From the natural tannins and pigments that are present within the leaf. Or if we are using them because they create a barrier between the die blanket and the scarf. We generally use a logwood dye blanket. Logwood is an interesting natural dye because we can change the color background based upon the mineral mordant that gets used. Everything gets rolled up and bound together. Then the bundles either steamed, boiled or processed in a dirty pot. Depending upon desired outcome.
The use of natural foliage makes every item unique to itself. We may try to create a line that looks similar. Everyone is just a little bit different just like every person!
