Monday morning.....

......and I have a stack of ironing to do.  No not the boring kind this.....

deep in the depth of my freezer I found a packet of Summer Fruits, now the summer for this particular pack passed long ago, I was just going to out them when I had a little "I wonder?". I thought I may be able to make some sort of pink paper (not something I really feel a lack of) but no nature and chemistry produced purple.

I put the berries  in the pan, added water and boiled them for about 15 minutes. I squashed the berries to extract as much colour as possible and then I strained them and put the juice in a foil baking tray. I then added a stack of assorted papers, one sheet at a time making sure each one was fully immersed. When I was nearly at the top I spread some of the pulp in between and that produced the pink   I left them overnight.
Not a nice day today so no hope of drying them with solar power so I popped them one sheet at a time into a low oven which is why they are a bit crinkly.

The variation of colour is interesting, the darkest ones are tracing paper and the lightest ones were only left for a few minutes this morning when I had taken out all the others.

What fun, now to do the kind of ironing I don't mind.

Days are full.....

........Le Tour de France and Wimbledon, well that takes half the day at least. I love watching the Tour for the scenery, sometimes places we have visited, more often stunning views of places from the helicopters which you would never see in a car ride.  My brother introduced me to watching the Tour and we used to discuss on the phone, I miss him.
 
Weather back to normal British summer, every day is different, Saturday was a can't-make- up it's mind day and we took a little trip down the Darent Valley forgetting it was the lavender season.

Can you smell it?

Another sight was a flash of red as we were driving and I had to go back to catch the most glorious field of poppies I have ever seen.

I really needed a ladder to do it justice.

 Apart from TV my other occupation has been to play with tea bags and paper. Just look, it was such fun.  I bought the cheapest fruit teas that I could find and made up three bowls.

This was liquorice which I thought would give me light brown but in fact it remained a very pale yellow. The other two I used were blackberry & blueberry and masala chai.

I arrange the papers and for once had patience and left them overnight. Whoo!

 

  One has an embellishment of a leaf I walked in from the garden.

It was interesting how the different types of paper absorbed the dye.

I actually have dozens more but won't bore you, I used the last of the dyes to make book pages. the Blackberry made a lovely grey. You can see them behind these little journaling cards I have been making.

Did I say that after initial reservations I am now deeply in love with Tim Holtz's Oxide Inks.

Sun shining, what to do first?  Oh, housework. OK then.

Faux rust link.....

I saw this tutorial  for making faux rust on A Vintage Journey this morning. It uses mainly Ranger products but interesting.   I thought I would pass it on

 

To Anonymous who left a question on this post about dying with avocado skins I think it would be difficult if you have a particular shade in mind as it all depends on the type of material as you can see in the picture. Thank you for your interest.

Snow in summer....

Last winter I tried snow dying, now in the summer I have been using some of the cloth.  This was mainly from the second batch which wasn't as vibrant as the first. 

This is my Doodle Bag, it was made for the EG South East Area Day. I outlined the colour areas on the cloth and then filled each one with a different stitch. The bag is made from purple dupion lined with lime green.

The odd  bits of cloth have been joined together as part of the classes I am taking with Jude Hill and form the base for the piece I am working on at the moemnt.

In the pink........

Well who would have thought it.  I read about it on  Gerdiary an of course I had to try it for myself.  What happens when you dye with avocado skins?  A beautiful lime green......no...the most notstaligic looking dusky pinks.

I peeled two avocado pears and waited until they were boiling,and added my bits and pieces, like I did with the blackcurrants. nothing seemed to happen for a while and then the materials slowly began to take the colour.  As with the blackcurrants and the snow the silk pieces gave the strongest results. Isn't nature amazing?

Some time in the winter  I read about crushing rose petals between fabric with a hammer and tucked it away as something to try. It has a proper name, "flower pounding". As our first flush of roses are just beginning to drop and I had all these lovely pink pieces to work with.I thought I would try it. I am sorry I can't remember the origianl reference but this seems to be quite a comprehensive "how to".  This is my result using rose petals, geraniums and petunias , I haven't done all the things you are supposed to do to the cloth to fix the dye so it will inevitably fade but it was fun to do.

Everybody's doing it......

it seems all the blogs I read at the moment have similar themes, tidying/organising workspace, plans for the future and over the last week snow dyeing.  I had to try,.  I'm not very good with dyes so I used Brusho paint instead. It won't be washable and I haven't a clue what I will do with it but it was great fun playing.

I have a green an purple piece melting at the moemnt.  Don't think there will be much more as we seem to be thawing, a wee bit sad as I didn't manage to get out and take some proper snow photographs.

And this....another picture from space?... the Grand Canyon perhaps?....... no just a negative of the photo above.

Domestic crisis........

My freezer stopped working last Thursday and I had to wait until yesterday for them to come and repair it!!! With massive cooking session and help from my magical neighbour Jan we managed to salvage quite a bit.  One victim, though,  was a bag of frozen blackcurrants which really didn't look at all appetizing. I was on the point of throwing them when I looked at my hands and the red stain on my fingers.....Hmmmm.....dash down to the workroom and grab assorted scraps... put blackcurrants and scaps in a pan and simmer gently for about an hour.  Leave overnight and this morning.....

Non of the fabrics reproduced the colour on my fingers but they did produce this wonderful assortment of purples and greys.  It never fails to fascinate how different fabrics react to the same dye in different ways. Now what to do with them...............