herb art

I went to the supermarket and bought a variety of herbs - red basil, thai basil, sage, tarragon, oregano - with the idea of bashing them to make art and at the same time it being a sensory experience for the nose!

we also tried out a variety of materials to bash it onto - paper serviettes, ordinary paper and denim. First it was to lay out the leaves and create a design - and of course nibble on some of the herbs at the same time... 

the napkin was folded back into its original square and my girls got banging (I have done this with 2-4 year olds too without any problems)

the result was great - although it does require some fine motor skills to carefully peel of the mushed leaves

we tried it with ordinary A4 paper in the middle of the serviette - and it was very clear that it did not work as well, the surface was simple too smooth for the pigments to imprint. Sophia took a pencil to create a flower shape around the print...

this is how the same flower looked on the serviette

intrigued by the huge difference between the serviette and the paper I took some a piece of denim remnant and banged the leaves... the detail was so much better, as you can see. So we are thinking about creating our own t-shirts this summer...
It was very noisy banging, we had a wooden chopping board underneath - but this would be so much better done outside. I would also like to use carrot tops and ferns - I reckon the dark pigment would transfer really well - looking forward to testing more ...