The warm sunny days we were having last week whispered to me that I should be setting up my wet studio in the basement--and so I began to do some experimenting while I was deciding logical places for all the paraphernalia I had brought along from PA. Many of my experiments could not be placed in the successful category and a couple were even in the frustrating category. But I did have some learning breakthroughs, particularly with sun-dyeing. Perhaps the biggest achievement was the reminder to myself that following directions is sometimes worthwhile. I had been relying on my memory of what I had done before but found my notes on the process and made a couple of discoveries:
1. Don't use opaque Setacolor paint; only the transparent works.
2. Thin paint is best: add water in a 2-to-1 ratio. Thick paint does not produce a darker result; the migration of the paint makes it darker and it needs to be thin to move.
And I actually got some patterning--
I'm not wild about the color, but the images are clear--and that wasn't happening last summer when I tried this.
I am happy with this one, which was the result of some scrunching and some mixing of colors. Now I am ready for a project with grand-kids!
And to round out the week I dyed some shimmery silk for a current project. This just glows when I work with it.
3 comments:
That's a project that I have planned to do with my grandkids this summer too! We will have to compare notes!
Nice! I have to keep reminding myself of those facts too, especially "thick paint does not produce darker results!"
I have to keep reminding myself those notes too, especially, "thick paint does not result in darker result!"
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