Merry Christmas!

I don't know about you, but I am ready to leave 2017 in the rearview and click the do-over button on January 1st. Normally I am more inclined to refresh my life in the fall and I am not a big believer in New Year's resolutions. I have some frustrating issues with my health and some other troubles that while they will pass, stole my energy and inspiration. I am at my happiest when answering the question "What if?" by creating something. So, I decided to take the advice of two great artists. Chuck Close said "Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work." Pablo Picasso said "Inspiration exists, but it must find us working." In other words, get off your butt whether you feel like it or not.

This time the spark came while standing in line at the grocery store. There were huge displays of poinsettias, and people are always asking me if they eco print, so why not give it a try? If nothing else it would be five bucks worth of entertainment.

Giving me a house plant is always dicy, I tend to enjoy them for a bit and then-off with their heads!

As you are aware, they have a reputation for being poisonous. The truth is they are more irritating than poisonous. The example given on various plant sites was that a fifty pound child would need to eat 500 leaves in one sitting to die. Cheery thought. Anyway, this would explain why a cat we used to have ate them on a regular basis and seemed just fine. The puzzling thing is they are reported to be absolutely vile to the taste buds. The reason is they contain (here are your big science words for the day) diterpenoid euphorbol esters and saponin like detergents, both bitter and mildly poisonous. The red color comes from red pigments called anthocyanins also found in red cabbage, blueberries, and raspberries. You can use poinsettia leaves to demonstrate ph just as you can with red cabbage. Since the white sap of the poinsettia can irritate the skin it is probably best to stick with red cabbage with young children, but high schoolers might get a kick out of beheading mom's house plant.

Wearing gloves to protect my hands as a precaution.

I used one scrap of silk crepe that had been treated with alum and one with steel wool which would also have been exposed to vinegar and salt as part of that process. I used both leaf colors and laid them face up and face down to see if one side printed better than the other.

I steamed the rolls for an hour and took them out for a rest, about four days.

I love peeking in the steamer to see what is happening, but I try to remember that they may not look the same at the end of the process.

The first one is the alum treated sample.  The red in the roll above changed to purple over the four days. Love the purple, the yellow is rather alarming. I may rip it in half and do a black bean dye over it to see if I can tone that down.

The leaves did make a more distinct print out the veined, or underside of the leaf, as most do.

The second sample is the silk that had been exposed to steel wool, salt and vinegar. These colors are much more appealing to my sensibilities.

I guess in all of this I was hoping for a pink or red, and if I played around with other mordants, I might just get it. Of course the next question is, "Is it permanent?". As much reading up as I have done, I can't answer that. Since it is the same pigment as red cabbage the answer might be that it needs another rinse in something else, and a possible color change, to make the resulting color last. The plan is to let the samples hang next to the studio window and expose them to our moderate (almost non-existent) winter sun and watch for changes. The best way to do that is to rip each sample in half and keep one in the closet while the other hangs out. I may use the rest of the plant in samples with other mordants or techniques and see what happens.

It looks pretty good even if its backside did get removed! Kind of like putting the bad side of the Christmas tree against the wall.

Merry Christmas and I hope 2018 turns out to be a year of wonder and inspiration for you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend." Melody Beattie

Time Change

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that."

Martin Luther King

Luminaria with eco printed shades

A Little Peace Please

"Stillness is the altar of the spirit."

Paramahansa Yogananda

A day spent on an experiment, lots of them! If they turn out they will be shades for luminaria, if not, I have a whole bunch of little pieces to play with. I have been chasing my own tail lately. To have a quiet day was necessary. I will get around to explaining the foil eventually.

Words to Live By

"Surrender to the process, not the goal."

Adam Steltzner

Ceramic pendants that will have glass centers! We hope!

Steaming paper.

Blackberry on silk crepe with steel wool.

No bodily harm-this is the next post, playing around with making natural inks and watercolors.

Alum as an Adjunct

To be honest, I don't do much with alum in general as it seems to make silk a bit stiff. After steaming red cabbage either in an eco print or by itself I do give a post steam rinse with a small amount of alum in the water. This turns the cabbage from red-purple to some shade of blue. The red-purple seems to be fairly fugitive while the blue lasts. I maybe use a teaspoon in a gallon of water per scarf. This is a guesstimate as I am usually working on more than one scarf at a time.

I did a scarf with Himalayan Blackberry on a rusted steel wool pre-mordant. Nasty plant, wonderful print-isn't that always the way! I like the stark, hand drawn look of the prints with the purply "bleed" from the end of the stems.

  

When I have put them in with red cabbage they appear to go pink after the alum rinse. I thought it would be interesting to see what they looked like by themselves with the after rinse. I heated up some water and dissolved the alum powder in it, then let it cool off. I immersed the scarf and kept an eye on it for changes. After a few hours I decided it didn't look like it was changing any more so I took it out and let it dry. I gave it a rinse with shampoo the next day. I didn't add any alkaline to the alum water as the scarf was already exposed to salt as part of the rust mordant done before the steaming. How much difference a cream of tartar addition would make I am not sure. I used a teaspoon of alum in a gallon and a half of water. I decided if I was writing a post about it I should make note of the details. As you can see in the next picture, the prints stayed dark and the background turned a limey green.

The conclusion I came to is that the leaves themselves are bleeding or "dyeing" the background, similarly to what the cabbage does, but in this case in it isn't readily apparent until you expose it to the alum. I liked this, but liked it without just as well so I decided to do another scarf with blackberry so I would have one of each. This also allowed me to take a picture side by side so the difference is really clear. Also proving that this can be done over and over with the same result.

A note about working with Himalayan Blackberry, it has miserable thorns. Gloves are advised and although I have never had it make an actual hole in the fabric I do trim the ends of the thorns before placing the leaves. 

So, I guess the conclusion is that sometimes an after bath in a small amount of alum can bring out colors you didn't know were there. As to whether you like it or not is another matter altogether, so using scraps to experiment with might be a good call. I have done this to some things that I really didn't care for the outcome. The items in the print that changed color did so in a way that did not mesh with the rest of the printing. Knapweed, Arrowleaf Balsamroot and Artemisia Wormwood usually come out some shade of yellow when an alum pre-mordant is used, sage green with rust pre-mordant, so when mixed in with leaves that may have tannins etc it may be the influence of the other leaves that causes the after rinse to produce less than ideal results-kind of an indescribably ugly color somewhere between dirty yellow and a not good lime green.

Fall

"Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go."

Unknown

Peony, Filbert and Coreopsis