Dyeing to Print III - paper technique

About 2 months ago, I put down a couple of jars of solar dyes. One with flax seeds and one with morning glory. I left them for a month in the weak autumn sun. When I took off the lids, phew, did these babies stink!! Putrid rotten leaves, dumped by the neighbours fenceline, and jars quickly stuffed in the dishwasher. The results were quite subtle, but give a good aged feel to the fabric. And once they are rinsed in rain water and dried, thankfully the smell dissipates.

Here are the results. Morning glory produced a pale pink, salmony colour. The flax, a sort of tea shade, more of an English Breakfast than Lady Grey.

This sample is from a fabric book I have been making with the Eco dyed and Eco printed calico and mull. To make the pages for this book I followed the technique documented by Cassandra Tondro
My dyeing equipment doesn't yet include a very large pan, so to get all my pages in the pot I had to cut them first after spraying with alum spray.

Each page is stuffed with autumn leaves, made into a bundle tied up with string.

This is placed in a pot, on a rack above water, and weighted down with an old iron trivet that weighs a ton. This bundle was steamed for 2 hours, then left to cool.

Once cooled, I couldn't wait to unpack it.

Each page has a unique print of leaf, some darker and more distinct than others. In particular, eucalyptus and loquat work really well.

The pages were laid flat - on the kitchen floor - to dry, while I batted the cat, who loves shredding paper, away from my work.

The next day, when fully dry, I ironed them using a dry iron, and folded them into the book pages ready to bind into the cover. I will blog the finished product next time.........

The Making of the Tentacles, for Alberto

This is the story of the making of Polyphemus, the cyclops monster of Homer's odyssey.

Polyphemus grew from some tin foil (or aluminum foil as they say in the states), some wire, Ave's 2 part apoxie clay and a baby doll head. Some say I'm a sick puppy.

Baby's head got seperated from her body in a sad accident (ahhh poor baby). Luckily I found her abandoned cranium and resurected her, gave her a sex change and made her into He-Baby.  A builder left behind at our house, a box of these fabulous nail strips from his automatic nail gun, which I refilled with rusty screws and attached to baby's head. No longer a baby, now some sort of Punk revival dolly he became the base for Polyphemus.

But now for the tentacles...... hmmm how to make these. Alberto had an idea (lightbulb), buy some Finger tentacles from an online shop. Muy buen idea mi amigo Alberto, but not so easy to find finger tentacles in NZ. Too impatient to wait for the American post, I decided to make my own.

Here comes the clever bit. Looked on line and found a great tutorial by Propnomicon, a fellow blogger and tentacle maker extraordinaire. This gave me the basis for the idea. Fueled by the insanely talented Michael deMeng's workshop 'Mad Alchemists Guide to Assemblage', I discovered Ave's 2 part apoxy clay and ordered it up from a local taxidermist supplier.

So.......... take some strips of fencing wire and wrap with foil, bend into shape.

Roll out the Ave's clay into thin strips. Wind it around the foil and smooth over any lumps.

Stick into Punk revival Dolly head (since glued onto the top of my shrine), and add texture to the tentacles with a button or something like that.

I added an evil blue eye (Daniel Craig's), and painted it with gesso.

....added an eye patch, an earing and painted with color washes and.....Bale..... Polyphemus es finito.

This shrine was made for my husbands 50th birthday gift. Next post, I will put up some photos of the completed assemblage.