Lake pigments continued

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closetohome, colour, crafts, DIY, mordant, nature, plants, primitivepaints, scruffyartsupplies

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Now that I have a small first collection of pigments to play with before new plants can be tested next summer (I do have some old dried things I can try too), there are multiple ways to use them. They need some kind of binder, although I suppose you could just soak them in water. Alcohol? But even watercolours have binders added to add intensity to the colour as well as make it stick to your paper.

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Plant pigment

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close to home, colour, crafts, DIY, garden, mordant, nature, plants, primitivepaints, scruffyartsupplies, summer

Five years ago I did a brief test of concentrated plant dye baths to see what they were like as watercolours. I didn’t add anything to it as I recall and I’m not sure where my sample is now!

More on local art supplies

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close to home, colour, country life, crafts, DIY, dyeing, mordant, nature, plants

During an investigation into using dry pigments and beeswax for painting rather than oilpaints, which I’m not enjoying, I’d been reading about making lake pigments and thought it would be fun to give it a try. These are pigments from plants as opposed to rock/earth/metal based colours, and since I already had some remedies as well as dried plant materials for dyeing wool, it wasn’t too much trouble to give it a try.

Micro foraging for art supplies

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close to home, country life, creativity, inner conviction, inspiration, intention, life, seasons, summer, weather

It hasn’t rained here in 3 months and has been unusually hot too, so most blooming things are over and done with if they have even survived. I’m glad I didn’t make a dye garden this year, as the cost of watering would have been massive.

Lincoln green 1

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blue, dyeing, garden, green, vaid, vau, weld, woad, wool

I created this post 2 years ago with the intention of writing a series devoted to different procedures. But my woad crops failed and other stuff happened, as per usual, and here we are. So while waiting for black paint to arrive some time in the distant future; in between holiday house chores, I have a bit of green for you.

Getting there: Carding

Tags

dorset, fiber prep, fleece, scouring, wool

Had I known how many years it would take to completion, I might never have accepted those first 5 dorset/suffolk fleeces, but here we are closer to completion than not, at last.

Every time I do a post about these, I also look for the original post, the very beginning of the project, and once again realize that it’s nonexistent. I got the first 3 fleeces before the blog began in 2012, so I never recorded the scouring etc. in here, the next two landed the year after, where I probably thought I’d already recorded it so thought nothing of it.

Frozen flower dye

Tags

dye storage, flowers, natural dyeing, seasons, wool, yarn

Last year weeds happened to my orange cosmos (it always starts growing very late for some reason – then blooms into October where it’s too wet to collect seeds properly), this year slugs have overrun our entire property, so I had one plant. For that reason I had a handful of flowers in the freezer from last year and collected all summer from my one little very brave specimen to get enough for a reasonable amount of wool.

Oak leaf dyeing

Tags

autumn, plants, wool, yarn

I’m about a month later than last time, but the leaves are still green, acorns have mostly fallen off or will in the strong wind which is now dominating our days.

Oak leaves are a bit pesky to harvest, they don’t let go if you rip at them, the tiny side twigs however are easily torn off. So you need to grab individual leaves and pull backwards to leave them undamaged, a test in patience. There are already buds at the base of each leaf, the tree surely doesn’t mind that I grab the old ones just weeks before they fall anyway.

Activities

Tags

colour, crafts, intention, life, studio, wool, yarn

Since I’ve spent so much time telling you how little I could do, I’d better counterweight that with a little progress update from the good days. Among other things I managed to grab some more photographic weather, so I now have a gazillion horse- and sunset photos to process and compile into little galleries now that it’s getting colder.

Some plant dyeing, finally

Tags

colour, dyeing, goldenrod, gyldenris, weaving, wool, yarn

Beginning with goldenrod from the forest, harvested at the very end of flowering. Unfortunately my own, which flowered later, have been overrun by weeds in the mean time.