Making Patterns From Nature

One of my favourite hobbies is to take photographs in nature and transform them into beautifully complicated patterns which I occasionally print on a basic colour printer and arrange into a frame. I am quite old and not particularly tech savvy so this is a quite simple process that I have worked out on my iPad.

I took the photos with my iPad

I used PS Express to tweak the images

I used iPad pages to arrange my pictures

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Basic colour printer

I use thin card to print the pictures as they are highly coloured and use a lot of ink and are easier to paste onto a board as they do not wrinkle.

I use spray mount to arrange the pictures as it is not absorbed and will not affect the print.

I use a large poster frame to collate the images together and display them.

Brown paper tape to surround the completed image

After running my chosen photograph through PS Express to sharpen the image and ramp up the colour, I used iPad pages to arrange the images and flipped three of the pictures to create a pattern ready combination as you can see in the images above. I also used pages to arrange the images into a pattern which I can store on my iPad.

This is what the images look like as I arrange them. I first arrange them on my iPad pages to see what they look like. If I am happy with the combination and I want to frame them, I can then print an A4 completed pattern or if I want to fill a large frame I print individual pictures of each segment onto thin card.

To create a large framed picture, I first purchased a secondhand poster frame. I took out the original poster and used it as backing for my pattern. I printed out a load of pattern segments onto thin card and cut them all out using a paper guillotine. I arranged them onto the back of the poster starting in the centre and working outwards. To make this look nice and level I first folded the poster into 4 to make sure I knew exactly where the centre was. I used spray mount adhesive to place my pieces which allowed me a little time for manoeuvre and has the advantage of not making the card too wet.

To complete the picture I edged the pattern with brown paper tape. I did this because the pattern didn’t quite come to the edges of the poster backing paper and I think it finished it nicely. I fitted the completed pattern into the poster picture frame and hung it on my wall.