Great Green Frames and Ink Jet Papers coming your way.

I've been saying over and over that THIS will be the weekend that I finish my Tulip Poplar Flower paintings. One is very close to being done, the other two just need some more coats of paint on the flowers and then I need to work on the middles (the stamens? I'm not completely knowledgeable in floral anatomy). I was telling my husband how excited I would be if I could find reclaimed-wood frames for them, or something else eco-friendly... AND what a bonus it would be if I could find frames made from poplar trees!

Today was my lucky day because through Twitter, I found a GREAT search engine called The Eco Key. It's a Google powered search engine that puts an eco filter on your search results! Especially when adding the words "eco-friendly" or "green" to my search, I was getting much better results than using a the standard search engine (with no eco-filter).

So, through The Eco Key's engine, I found my frames on Etsy.com.
Behold BucksCountyFrames shop! They have lots of standard sizes and offer custom, too!!

Photo copyright from The Bucks County Frame Company:
The frames I purchased.

If you're interested in eco-friendly frames, there are quite a few people on Etsy who make them, and some do custom sizes, etc. I did searches for "ecofriendly frame" (click to see the results of search), and "reclaimed wood frame" (click to see search results).


While I was playing around with the new search engine, I decided to look online for some good recycled and/or eco-friendly paper options to use with my new printer. I've got some Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Matte paper (I hear over and over that Epson printers are really designed to work best with their own papers) that I've used for some 8x10's and ACEOs and so far I really like it. But I'd prefer to find a more eco-friendly paper option- but only if it's going to make my prints look their best, and not ruin my printer.

I searched with The Eco Key again and found The Green Rooster which is Hahnemühle's eco-friendly paper line. They've got 2 bamboo papers and one made from sugar cane. 5% of the proceeds from the Green Rooster label papers are donated to environmental protection projects. After reading about the 3 different papers, I decided to order some made from sugar cane (here's some info about sugar cane paper and here's some cool stuff too) as it's a natural by-product and got some great reviews online.

It was a little tough choosing a paper though because you always have to wonder, which is best? Which is the most green? What happens to sugar cane by-products that aren't made into paper? If they would otherwise go to waste, then it's great to have found a use for them in a nice art paper. I also know that generally speaking, sugar cane farms have some bad effects on the environment too, though (as does almost all agriculture, sadly). But what about Bamboo... that would be a whole separate blog post, as bamboo seems eco-friendly but when you start really researching what goes on with it, at least to produce fabrics and things, it might not be so great after all.

That doesn't mean I love Bamboo (as a plant) any less.