I know it's not officially autumn yet, but the beginning of September always puts me in an autumnal mood. And I've been wanting to share this lovely wreath tutorial (above) with you since August, so I'm excited to share it now because it's a perfect project for fall.

 

You may remember I brought up the topic of sun-bleached materials in the last newsletter? Quick recap; a lot of plant material has been sitting outside, getting bleached and dried for nearly 3 months straight. This is unusual for our “wet coast” - even in summer there’s often rain, which would have kick-started the biodegrading process. I’ve been fascinated to see the difference in plant material this summer in comparison to summers before.

 

If you’ve been following me on Instagram you may have noticed my obsession with Garry oak leaves lately. As you can see in the photo below, there's a difference between the leaves that I picked up around this time last year, versus the leaves picked up this year. Perhaps it's just the novelty of having sun-bleached materials on hand, but I found this uniformity in colour to be really appealing, and I thought the leaves would make a gorgeous autumnal wreath for our front door.

 

So if you have 6 1/2 minutes, settle in for some gentle botanical observations and a really simple How-To video. My husband even made some bespoke music to go with it. Click on either photo above or below; it'll take you to my YouTube page. Newsletter subscribers get first access to this video! But feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who might enjoy the project.

This summer, I took an online class called Brushes to Brooms. It seemed a good fit since I had already started creating mark-making tools out of arbutus twigs. I love the unpredictability of an uneven, unexpected "brush". Sometimes when I hold a real paintbrush, I can bring too much expectation to the paper, and this is a great to way leave the expectations behind. Some of these brushes on (the ones made all out of cedar bark) are also based on a technique in Nick Neddo's book The Organic Artist. It's a fantastic book for anyone who's even slightly into the idea of making their own art supplies.

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Now that's it's finally just started to rain here on the west coast, be sure to gather up any of that lovely sun-bleached material that catches your eye. If you grab it sooner rather than later, you can catch it before it starts to biodegrade. Since there is damp material laying on the ground, you can even start twiddling with grasses laying about and make a nice bit of cordage on your next walkabout.

New on my website:

I've added a page were you'll see archived newsletters so you can refer back to Field Notes anytime. You'll just need to be already subscribed to the newsletter. The website will ask you for a one-time login (create a new password), then it should remember you next time you visit and want to review any info in past newsletters.

 

Do you have a plant lover or nature nerd in your life? Let them know about this newsletter if you think they might enjoy my flavour of botanical explorations & creative inspirations.

 

As the leaves start to fall, I'll be there gathering them up in preparation for more botanical contact printing experiments this winter. Here's a video "reveal" of one of my early experiments from last year. 

 

Until next month, stay curious,

Christi York

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