Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Adding a little color to my day

Well, the moths have hatched, mated, laid eggs, and passed on.  It was fun and I'm looking forward to having an afternoon to process the cocoons.  But this week, in honor of the increasing afternoon clouds and rain, we did a little color work.  Have you seen the Sharpie tye-dye technique flitting around Pinterest and art blogs?  It looked too simple to be true, but guess what?  It works and it works well!

The top photo is the bottom of a big t-shirt that we are going to turn into a skirt for Frances.  The bottom image is a t-shirt we are working on for Nora.  The process is really simple. You just use rubber bands and cups or jars to create tight spots on your fabric. We are using t-shirts, but some folks use muslin and I have some dish towels that I think this would work on.  I used egg-dye cups left over from Easter. Draw with your sharpies.  I don't know if other brands will work--all the blogs I have read call for sharpies.  Then, when you are finished making swirls, dots, squiggles, fans. or whatever shapes strike your fancy, drip isopropyl or rubbing alcohol into the center of the tight spot and watch the colors spread.  Many sets of directions counsel patience and a reasonably light hand with the drops.  My family lacks patience, so we dripped fairly heavily.  We might have gotten more subtle designs if we had gone slower, but we are happy with our results. I also tried this on some watercolor paper. The effect wasn't quite as dramatic, but it made nice color splotches.  I also sprinkled some salt on the paper before dripping the alcohol and got some fun results. I haven't tried that on the t-shirts yet.

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