spray ink & celery background

So you know that random half used chunk of celery in the back of the crisper of your fridge? Yeah, you're going to need it for this project. You can feel good about using your veggies (even if you aren't eating them) AND making a unique background for your next scrapbook project. Win/win!

I have seen how the bottom of celery has been used with paint as a stamp to almost create a flower like pattern. I thought...what would it look like if I tried pairing this veggie with spray ink? This is the part of the celery I always throw away anyway so if I could make something cool with it, well, I was willing to try. I really like the look of shibori so I chose to use a deep indigo color of ink. Any ink color would work depending on the mood/look you are going for with your project. You can use the ink just straight up, but I chose to add two sprays of ink to a bowl and then water it down a bit.

I put the cut end of the celery in the ink and then stamped on white cardstock. You can see it is pretty wet so you will want to wait for it to dry completely. The look will be perfectly imperfect.
Once the cardstock is dry, the color is more muted in some places and deeper in others. I rotated how I held the celery so that the image wasn't consistent. I wasn't sure how I would use this paper, but after it was dry it reminded me of water and the celery pattern turned out a bit like a funky starfish. Pairing this background with some of the softer pieces from Studio Calico's The Underground kit and a beach photo just seemed to tie it all together.

The "on the beach" page was from an old book I found at the thrift store. I just love it when thrift store finds, old veggies and scrapbooking collide ;)

I love how this simple technique took some almost discarded produce and a plain piece of cardstock and created a unique background. So see...celery isn't just for peanut butter anymore. What other veggies should we try?