Eco-dyed paper experiment!

Dear readers

in my last post I mentioned some eco-dyeing

 that I had been

experimenting with

at home and thought I might share some more images

of

some tools, plants etc. that I used to create these results.

This post is not really a tutorial on eco-dyeing as such

 but rather my own adventure into experimenting with 

some plants from my garden. 

In this particular case these are a couple of plants I used.

This first one is from the Plectranthus family - there

are many varieites of this plant but I used

Plectranthus Nitidus (Silver Plectranthus)

Another plant was Impatiens!

I also used some ferns, palm leaves and

Japanese Maple.

 

I prepared 6 sheets of 300gms heavy weight water color paper

then laid my plant material overlapping on each page,

picking up the whole lot and placing the pages

in my wooden plant press

which 

was just created from timber and 4 bolts with wing nuts

 in each corner.  

 I tightened everything down then placed the press
in this enamel dyeing container which was
3/4 full and which I had brought to the
boil with a number of rusty nuts, bolts, rusty steel rods, 
bits and pieces
to create some iron to the pot of water.

 

Before placing the plant press in the water

I added 1 cup of vinegar to act as a mordant.

I also did another little experiment where I added a few

sprinklings of Dylon grey dye to the water

(something which I saw on a You Tube video)

this was purely experimental also!

I left the press in the pot for approx. 90 minutes before

removing

and

when I removed the plant material from the pages

these are the results they gave.

 

I must say the whole process was very uncomplicated

and gave the most amazingly clear results!

 

 These images above were taken once I removed them from

the dye pot still wet - so they were quite strong

and the images below were taken several days later.

 So the dried results were still very striking - strong and dark

but soft and subtle also!

 

The dyed lace piece was from a different project where I was

using some "Infusion" - dried coloured stains but

I thought they blended so beautifully together

along with some favourite lace fabric,

burnout fabric and trims.  

 

 This is one project where I used the beautiful eco-dyed paper!

 

 Hope this gives you a little inspiration to

try this type of natural dyeing. It is

so rewarding in every possible way -

and

don't forget to share your results with us too!

Love and hugs,

Suzy xox