Thursday, March 17, 2011

dyeing to make a mess

Yesterday, I decided that today would be the day to try some soy wax resists with dye rather than paint, as I've done before in the past. It doesn't matter how organized I think I am, I still manage to make a mess.I managed to clean most of it up except for the bits of stains left on my fingers, and yes, I did wear gloves.
I had some rather old dyes left over from a workshop, but I'm told that I should use them anyway. I'm only experimenting at this point. I wanted to thicken the dyes, but can't buy the sodium alginate anywhere remotely near, so I tried agar which is similar. It sort of worked; I'm going to order the proper thickener though.

This was my first idea-- a dove shape cut out of paper. I painted the soy wax inside the paper frame.
On this one ( you'll have to look closely to see the wax), I simple painted the flowers free hand with the wax. I'm not exactly sure how the dye will take. I did use soda soaked fabric. When I paint or do gel prints on fabric, I usually use more than one color and I can mix them as I go. Here I used only one color dye because I didn't want to mix more colors until I get the right thickener. The result might be very blah. We'll see. At least I'll have a better idea what to do next time. In the meant time I must wait.
 The hardest thing is that I have to leave them sit wrapped in plastic to 'batch'.

1 comment:

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

It looks like you are getting some nice cracks in the soy wax.