Placenta plans

So yesterday I made a trip to our local art supply store, and approached the guys at the counter with trepidation.

"Uh, hi, so I have this question, and I apologize because it's sort of weird, but..." (deep breath) "we want to make prints with a placenta and need to know what paper you'd recommend?" In reality it came out more like "tomakeprintswithaplacenta".

But, lo, the nice gentleman at the art store was all like, "Oh, yeah, no problem, we just had someone in asking about that, we've done that a lot!" and then proceeded to call over his coworkers, who started googling placenta prints, helpfully clarifying "you could just use the blood! It would stain great!" and then they collectively helped steer me towards printmaking paper. I got big sheets so we could extend the rather long cord, and got 12 because I figured from my previous non-placental printmaking experience that it might take us a while to get one we wanted.

When I asked about ink, he helpfully said, "Well, some people just use the blood, but the last people we had coming in asking about ink were really looking for something nontoxic because they wanted to eat it afterwards, so we suggested squid or octopus ink, but we had to send them to Uwajimaya for that." I clarified that we had absolutely no intent to eat the placenta afterwards, so regular water-based print-making ink was fine. I got black and green, a little roller for even application, and voila, no big deal, just another day at the art store.

I sometimes love living in Seattle.

The placenta print making was in fact really fun. We did two with the placenta as-is and then decided the ink would work a lot better, and it did. You can see the details of the veins much more clearly. We opted for inking up the fetal side and not the maternal side because the maternal side was just a bit lumpy and harder to get good prints from.

The highlight of the experience was when Stephanie fielded a call from her mom, and had to repeat "placenta PRINTS" about ten times while I giggled in the background. Turns out Donna was hearing "placenta crepes" which is about the only thing that makes placenta arts and crafts seem normal by comparison. :) And I don't blame her, we've been eating a lot of crepes lately.

We're waiting until the in-laws arrive in Seattle tonight before we toss the placenta into the freezer, so they can have a look at it because it's pretty cool. Then the plan is to keep it in a well-labelled ziplock bag until we buy a house (hopefully later this year) and then we'll plant it with a tree in the yard. Suggestions on what kind of tree are welcome, but I think it might just depend on what kind of yard we end up with.