Thursday 16 October 2014

Green Tea Rust Dyeing Experiment

 Home with a day off after my stimulating  CQ Winter School workshop  on rust marks with Alice Fox, I wanted to have a go straight away while  it was fresh in my mind.  I found a  bag with some old tools in the cellar ( mainly some of my Dad's pliers) and some Green Tea bags bought from a herbalist in Iran which I hadn't got round to trying ( good for obesity apparently!)
As before I placed some watercolour paper in a tray and placed tools and items either directly onto the paper or wrapped them in silk or linen  with lashings of tea. I then lay a piece of silk chiffon over the top. The photo  below was taken just after setting up, the photo above was the marks on  paper after 3 impatient days!  I'm thrilled  with most of the results - I used the tea  when it was hot and there's less of the brown  staining resulting from normal tea, more variety in colour and tone.
The chiffon layer on top also picked up stronger marks
 I was also pleased with the marks on the strips wrapped round nails 9 although there were a few that took up hardly any caolour.

I liked the effect of the rusty tin bottom ( above)  and the piece of shelving bracket (below)

The wrapped pliers gave the most interesting  and  pleasing results: linen above, silk habatai below. Definitely an experiment to build on.  

3 comments:

Debbie said...

Wow you have acheived some amazing results, very impressive, I am doing a course next year with Alice having already done a one day one with her, really looking forward to it especially if I can get anywhere near to yours.

Maggi said...

Fabulous results

jackie said...

I have enjoyed looking through your blog.
Congratulations on being featured in Whitney Sherman's book.