A comical journey in natural dyeing!
With my recent forays into bookmaking, it has naturally (well, at least I think it’s natural!) led to me trying to find interesting papers to use in those books.
I already had some interesting papers, but they lacked individuality. This is because they were mass printed from the one image.
I heard about people dyeing papers for their books, so went searching on youtube. Does anyone else get addicted to finding things on youtube, or is it just me? I started out finding a really interesting little video where the creator used dyes, but scrunched the paper. The results looked awesome, so I thought I’d give it a try.
This led to experiment 1!
Experiment 1 was food colouring in water. This involved adding food colouring to a tub of water, soaking the papers in the tub for 12 hours or so, and then taking them out of the dye bath, scrunching them up and letting them dry while scrunched.
This was absolutely hilarious. Firstly, 12 hours was way too long to leave photocopy paper in a dye bath, so they became pretty fragile. This was exacerbated by me scrunching them, and the fact that it took ages to dry. Especially as I was so excited and impatient to see how it was going to turn out. This resulted in plenty of tears and holes.
In addition to this, I decided to put some of them into the oven to speed up the drying process. Unfortunately, and hilariously, some of the papers were too close to the element at the top, and it soon led to burn marks and burn holes.
Anyway, after everything going wrong that could go wrong, I ended up with a stack of paper that I needed to iron. Surprisingly, I didn’t burn them all to a crisp! I also ended up with some really awesome looking papers.
On to experiment 2 ….
I tried doing coffee in a similar way to the food colouring. I guessed how strong it should be, and made it pretty strong. After the fun with the scrunched papers, I did some papers just flat, and some scrunched, but not as scrunchy as the food colouring. And there was NO oven drying involved lol.
This time I also dried some with the iron, which gave some interesting effects as well. Not to mention that the smell of coffee permeated the room!
Once again, I ended up with really awesome papers. Unfortunately, I left the coffee bath there ready to do some more later, only to come out a couple of days later to find a little bit of mouldiness … sigh … the trials and tribulations of Liz the dyer!
Following on from those two experiments, I spent some more time on youtube (what a surprise!) trying to find some other interesting ways to dye paper. There were many, many options. Like avocado skins, onion skins and various other things. As I didn’t have those, I thought I would try a red cabbage – it seemed like an easy option!
Next up, experiment 3!
I decided to try two ways of getting the colour. One was pouring hot water over the chopped up cabbage and leaving it overnight. The other was boiling the chopped up cabbage and then leaving it to simmer for several hours.
This was so much fun. Along the way, I made prints with the raw chopped cabbage straight on to paper – fantastic result! We also ate the boiled cabbage for dinner after it was done (dual purpose cabbage)! I made dyed paper from the pieces of cabbage after each process (very interesting results). And, of course, I dyed the paper in a dye bath, scrunching some and leaving others.
The results were amazing with colours ranging from a light blue purple colour, to purples and even some oranges with papers that were ironed. The variety was unbelievable.
In addition to that, I didn’t even use a mordant, which I believe would probably have changed things again, and different mordants give different results as well. So many more potential colours and results are waiting out there for me.
I’ve had a little rest for a while, but my paper stash is reducing, so it’s time to do some more. This time I decided to try some different methods. And, as I write this, papers are drying, and I’m waiting to see the results. I’ll be back with another blog about that, once I’ve had a chance to process what’s happened.
I may have only done three experiments so far, but as you can see, it’s providing me with heaps of entertainment. Every time I do one, I learn more, get more excited and have that delicious anticipation of what the outcome will be. Not to mention laughing hysterically at all the weird things that happen!
If you’ve dyed some paper naturally, and have a great method you think I should try, please drop a comment below and let me know! You never know, you could turn up in my blog!!
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