Make Your Own Botanical Portraits

Posted on May 16, 2019 By

Have you ever seen Justina Blakeney's "Face the Foliage" portraits? These gorgeous works of art involve assembling leaves and flowers into detailed portraits of people. And they totally inspired us to put the foliage in our Printmaking Kit to work!

Materials:

- Printmaking Craft Kit

- scissors

- water

- glue stick

Steps:

1. Layout design -- using the pre-cut foliage shapes from the kit, start laying out the main facial features (eyes, nose, mouth). Cut slivers from the larger sheets to create an outline of the face and any additional features. Then go back and fill in with more detail -- hair, accessories, etc. Use the glue stick to adhere the design to a piece of paper from the craft kit.

2. Prepare print paper -- use the kit's foam brush to paint water onto the white paper from the kit. Paint liberally, but don't over soak it.

3. Make print -- lay the wet paper upside down onto the colored design. Press evenly and firmly across the pattern. Separate the two piece of paper to see a portrait emerge!