Nature through a Nikon, turned into things you can put on your wall, your body, and your ears.
Botanicals and landscapes printed on thrifted hoodies and vintage denim jackets. Photographs pressed into earrings. Words layered over images that make them mean something different.
Where possible, the clothing starts second-hand. Because a vintage denim jacket with a cyanotype fern on the back is more interesting than a new one. Every time.
This studio is an experiment in progress. Come see what's happening.
The Print Studio is where photography meets everything else. Some of it is almost ready. Some of it is still being figured out. All of it is worth watching.
An old photographic process where images are made with sunlight and chemistry, not a printer. Botanical and landscape photographs pressed directly onto fabric.
Clothing, tote bags, whatever the fabric will hold. Each piece is a one-off. The process won't allow for anything else.
Botanical and landscape photography paired with words. Subversive sometimes. Positive sometimes. Occasionally both at the same time, which is the best kind.
For your phone, your desktop, your lockscreen. Art you look at twenty times a day without realising it.
Photographs printed small and turned into something you wear. Still working out the best way to do this well.
The goal is a pair of earrings that looks like a tiny window into somewhere beautiful. Worth the patience to get right.
Nature photography and words, on fabric you actually want to wear. Thrifted hoodies, vintage denim jackets and second-hand shirts where possible. Something that makes people lean in to read it and then think about it for the rest of the day.
Cyanotype is one of the oldest photographic processes still in use. It was invented in 1842 and it produces that deep, unmistakable Prussian blue.
The process is simple in theory and unpredictable in practice, which is exactly what makes it interesting.
A photosensitive solution is applied to fabric. A negative or object is placed on top. Sunlight does the rest.
No two pieces come out the same. The sun angle, the cloud cover, the temperature, the fabric weave, the exposure time: all of it affects the result. You learn to work with the variables rather than against them.
For botanicals and landscapes, the results can be extraordinary. A fern frond. A leaf. A photograph of mountains rendered in blue on a piece of linen. It looks like nothing a printer could make, because it isn't.
The cyanotype process cannot produce identical results. Slight variations in sun, time and temperature mean every piece is genuinely one of a kind.
Each cyanotype starts as one of Erika's photographs or botanicals, then goes through the process. The image and the medium inform each other.
The clothing that gets printed on is second-hand or vintage wherever it can be. A thrifted denim jacket or a vintage hoodie brings its own history to the piece before the cyanotype even begins.
A landscape photograph is complete on its own. Adding words to it is a risk.
The only words worth adding are ones that change how you see the image, or ones the image changes how you read. The rest are just captions.
Some of the words here will make you smile. Some will make you uncomfortable in a productive way. Some will do both at once, which is the goal.
Subversive and positive aren't opposites. The best ones are both.
"You are enough. The world will catch up."
"Grow anyway."
"This is fine. (It isn't. Do it anyway.)"
The Print Studio is the newest and most experimental part of Erika Elma Creatives. New work gets added as it gets made, which means there's always something in progress and something almost ready.
The best way to know when something new arrives is to follow along on Etsy or check back here. No newsletter, no drip campaign. Just the work, when it's ready.