Our local textile center sent out a mailer advertising their upcoming classes. Part of one was about snow dyeing (I DO live in Minnesota after all and we have to do SOMETHING with all this white stuff - You know how dyers feel about white!!). I couldn't take the class but just the description was fascinating. I had a good bit of left over dye from a dyeing marathon I just completed so figured..... Why not just wing it and see what happens. So..... this may not be the official method but it is what I am trying.
OK, Day 1 I just poured out a few colors of left over dye onto the snow by our driveway.
It froze overnight but what was interesting is..... it didn't really freeze like an ice cube. Most of it kept the snow texture!!! Didn't expect that!
Today I went out and scooped up most of this dyed snow into a bucket
I had several small pieces of P&B dyers cloth which had already been soaked in soda ash and dried on the clothes rack. I just put a few pieces on the plastic bin lids I use for any number of things. Then I just grabbed handsful of snow dye and plopped it on the fabric.
Then I thought..... I'm preparing a creative journal for a class I'm taking in January so why not try snow dyeing a page to see what it would look like! (I had already heard somewhere that leftover dye made a great "paint" for water color paper pages and I had previously done a lot of those) The paper is at the top of the following picture.
Here is the water color paper page from my journal after the snow melted. It is not dry yet, though. I LOVE it and will probably do more pages for my journal with this method!!
So here are pictures of the fabric as the snow is melting. It is quite a messy project but a lot of fun so far. I think I will just let them batch where they are overnight. Moving them mixes the dye too much as I don't want just a lot of brown fabric (although one of the colors I used for this project IS brown)
This one is almost all melted.
OK, check back in tomorrow. I have to rinse, wash and dry a few color wheels tomorrow so I will process these also. I'll post the results here tomorrow afternoon sometime.
Well, I couldn't wait any longer. After I finished writing my pages this morning, I rinsed out the snow dye pieces really well and hung them on the clothes rack to dry. Turned on the ceiling fan to speed the process and then ironed them. I'll toss them in the process with the color wheels later. But below are the results. I happen to LOVE this process!!! One thing I DID learn though is that it takes less snow dye than I thought. I mopped up a good bit later yesterday because I didn't want the pieces to just sit in a brown soup all night. I only used a brown mix I had, a little Sunrise Red, Cerulean Blue and Sun Yellow and a little bit of a purple mix I had leftover.
This first piece was folded in half and not scrunched up much other than just a very little bit.
The rest of the pieces were scrunched about as much as I could get them to be since they were dry pieces of fabric.
And Oh yes!!! I plan to do a few more of these today between cleaning my bedroom and wrapping presents!! It is great fun and I love the serendipity of the process!
The daughter of our close friends is getting married Dec. 29. She is an artist and we had such a great time at her shower talking about art. While thinking about someting to give them for their wedding I noticed that their wedding website said they are going to the Caribbean for their honeymoon!!
I had just been working on a creative journal for a class I am taking in January. I had learned earlier that it is great fun to "paint" watercolor papers with used MX dyes! It is also a lot of fun to scribble on Shiva Paintsticks and the use the dyes over them. The oil paints, of course, make a kind of resist and some very interesting looks! So I had been painting and painting a bunch of pages for that journal. Then it hit me!! I could make Nate and Alissa a journal for their honeymoon!
The colors I chose are from a color wheel I did previously which I named Caribbean Cruise. The colors reminded me of blue/green ocean, sunshine and lush greenery. I dug those pieces out of my stash and went to work.
I made the base "fabric" with Fast2Fuse and ironed the fabrics onto it. Then I painted some cheesecloth with Jacquard DynaFlow. I also had dyed some used dryer cloths with some cerulean blue. And I had some really cool dyed paper towels from cleaning up after my creative journal painting. It turned a wonderful brown. I made the layers I wanted - including some melted Tyvek and some foiling and a lot of MistyFuse!! Then I covered it all in a bronze tulle.
Wrapped the fabric to the back of the Fast2Fuse and then used more of the Caribbean Cruise fabric to make the inside of the covers. Then more foil work.
After a lot of thinking about how to bind it I decided on three clip rings and tied on strips of the fabric remnants. Here are pictures of the journal.
JOURNAL FRONT
JOURNAL INSIDE FRONT
JOURNAL INSIDE PAGES
JOURNAL BACK COVER (the two pieces of velcro attach to the journal bag - see below) Oh, and it doesn't look like a straight rectangle - but it is.
I also wanted to give Alissa some pens to write or draw with in the journal so I bought a set at the office supply store and then wanted to have them actually WITH the journal. So, I made a kind of bag (again using the same color wheel) to carry the journal and pens together.
JOURNAL BAG FRONT
JOURNAL BAG BACK (with marker pens)
I did snowflake stitching around the pen pocket just to remind them that the DID get married in Minnesota in the WINTER!!! Don't want them to forget that while they are sunning on the beach!!!
October, 2007
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