Printing with vegetable scraps

This project came about completely spontaneously, which is always a delightful occurance. My S.O. was cutting the bottoms off of a bunch of baby bok choi, and I noticed that the cut ends looked like roses. 

I've seen the chopped end of a bunch of celery used to make flower prints, so I thought I'd try a smaller version with our bok choi ends.  I poured some red acrylic craft paint into a clean peanut butter jar lid (perfect for such tasks) and grabbed a couple of pages from pads of inexpensive drawing paper.

I chose two of the bigger, sturdier bok choi ends for this. If I had gone about this more deliberately, I would cut a little farther from the end, so I'd have something to hold onto. (And I'd wash the bok choi better. It was from a farm stand, so at least the dirt is local, and all natural!) As it was, I needed to stick a toothpick into the base for a handle. Using the toothpick, I dabbed the cut end into the paint. 

Then I just pressed the painted end onto the paper. It worked best when I rocked the end around in a circle so all of the edges made contact with the paper. I usually got two or three flowers from each dip into the paint. I also tried to rotate the bok choi as I added more prints, to make the flowers look scattered and random. I think the paper came out looking pretty good!

 It sort of reminds me of old-fashioned block-printed wallpaper. I might add some leaves, using a stamp made by cutting a leaf shape out of felt and gluing it to a block. This makes lovely wrapping paper, or you can use the technique to make homemade cards. 
Here's to impromptu art exploration! 
​xo