hey guys. I have been trying Eco dyeing on paper
lately. I was really inspired by... I don't know, a picture or a video or something?
probably on Pinterest? it was this fun looking activity where you take a bunch
of leaves and you wrap it up in paper or fabric and boil it to get all the colors
from the leaves and stain the paper or fabric that you are boiling. and since we
have such a surplus of leaves out there right now, I really wanted to try it but
I'm also trying it in a half-hearted way. you're supposed to have a designated pot
to boil these things in, for obvious reasons.
you know you don't want to have wild leaves, especially ones you don't really
know what they are, maybe some of them are not good for you? you don't want to
be boiling them in your dinner pots and then make dinner in the pots. what I
decided to do was take this manila paper and sandwich it really tight and then
put it in a bucket under a flower pot and pour boiling water in there. I know
that the instructions say you're supposed to boil these things for
something like an hour or two hours or something like that
so I really didn't think that this was gonna work. in the first batch I decided
to pour boiling water in the bucket and then when that cooled down a little bit
I think I poured it out and I did it again. and you need some kind of metal to
act as what they call a mordant. it reacts with the tannins and colors in
the leaves to get it to seep into the paper. in the first batch I just took
every rusty little piece of metal that I could find: old screws,
old bolts, some washers... just stuff that my husband's been hoarding in the closet
for a long time. it was enough. it was like a handful and then just threw it in
there. let's see how that goes.
okay so I wasn't really impressed by the first batch and I thought well you know
what, I'm not really doing it correctly. but there were some things that I
thought that I could change. for example, the Mordant is typically something like
an aluminum product you can buy for canning, or you know iron... something or
other. but you can make it by soaking piece of metal in vinegar. so I'm
not entirely sure if I'm going to try it again a different way or
whatever. but I find most of the result happened around the edge and I
can't tell if that is because of the the metal in the water - because it's required
to have some kind of metal like iron or aluminum are some things that reacts
with the tannins and the leaves and I think maybe that's what's making this
black here? and you can see some things like this - I think it was a Japanese
maple leaf. got the most interesting reaction because you can definitely see
the shape of it but I don't know... because there's some red here from the leaf, and
this black is a reaction from the metal. maybe it was in the water too long?
so I think I might try this again. watercolor paper did really well
probably because it is the most absorbent it still isn't that great.
I think it's just because one: the most absorbent and - it was also at the
very bottom of the page so it got the most of the metal. not to mention this
incredibly rusty paper clip, that was cool. this leaf here is great
you can see an outline of leaf here but the thing is I can't tell if this is
actually eco dyeing or if it's just a stencil where the leaves were pressed up
against it and and things were happening around it. like I don't know if any color
is actually coming out of the leaves or if this is just dirty metal water, you
know what I mean? so but I can still kind of play around
with it a little bit I think. and this time I decided to put metal in a little
container of vinegar... I didn't realize you were supposed to dilute the
vinegar... so I left that for like 24 hours. it was supposed to take a week but I
only had 24 hours before I was ready to do this again. and the second time you
will see that the water is much darker and there's a lot more crud kind of
floating around. mm-hmm I also took some of the the vinegar that the metal was
soaking in and I used a paint brush to apply it to the pages because I thought
that maybe either the sandwich was too tight or like it wasn't sure if there
was too much water or not enough water getting in? and I think in the next batch
I didn't leave it in the water overnight. I actually took it out and let it sit
and it's in its own wet little envelope for pretty much 24 hours
I think. and it was so hard not to peek.
so I ended up doing this a bunch of times
adding more vinegar, adding less vinegar, soaking longer, soaking shorter time and
I think the most ridiculous result was the second one where I just used way too
much vinegar. just kept kind of bouncing back and forth. I think my
favorite leaves were maple leaves especially Japanese maple, was really
good. and the smoke bush was absolutely wonderful. I'm kind of surprised I
didn't get much of a reaction with oak leaves because I used to use those my
fish tank and it would make the water nice and soft and brown. I don't know why
that didn't happen this time. maybe it's it needs
longer or maybe it needed to be more fresh leaf, I don't know. but a lot of the
leaves like the really fragile leaves like clover and some random green weeds,
grass and stuff like that? I didn't really get any marks out of that at all
which is disappointing because those ones usually have the most interesting
patterns. but oh well. and so I took a whole new pages that I
made and I've decided to bind them into a little book . this would make a
really interesting journal I guess? art journal probably? probably not a great
sketch book but we'll see what happens in the future. I might
list this one in the shop, even though it really isn't meant to last forever.
it's not really designed to last forever. I imagine inside of a book the colors
would probably be pretty well protected from sunlight and I don't know if
there's anything other than sunlight that would cause them to fade ? I
don't know. it's a giant a guessing game. I have this cute book full of leaf
ghosts . it is so easy and there are so many leaves out there right now. and I
have this whole entire pad of Manila paper that I will probably make another
one. so I made this book from the pages that I stained. I have smaller ones
too like when I did this the Manila paper was already pretty light and
interesting but now it's like.. it's so squishy, it feels like a pile of old money.
I had some of these extreme pages in there just to throw them in because it
looks so cool. I like the way the leaf looks like it's splashed. it's also
different... there's lots of pages that are just mucky like
this but it would be a good place to actually do artistic things
I don't know what I would do with a book like this. it would make a
really cool written journal I guess because I wouldn't want to cover
up things myself. I really love the purple in this one and this paperclip.
most interesting thing I've noticed is that even though I've ironed it some of
these marks aren't really stains or anything, they're actually just
indentations left from the leaves that were in there which i think is just as
cool as this kind of stuff where it made this gorgeous pattern. this is such an
addictive project. I actually don't think I'm gonna stop. I'm going to work on
other things but at night I'm just going to keep using up the stack of paper that
I cut because I just can't stop. it's just so interesting and out of your own
control. look at this leaf
ghosts of leaves! sorry they're doing landscaping outside, you're gonna be able to
hear it probably. I really love the smoke bush ones, so cool.
the iron is really crusted on there. well it doesn't seem to come off
which is nice. these brush strokes are so interesting but I really didn't expect
that to happen. it's just stained with vinegar I guess
this very faint leaf ghost
I really love this leaf it looks like it's disintegrating
there's some tissue paper here