Adventures in snow dyeing
Nancy Breland of Pennington, NJ provided a set of detailed instructions on snow dyeing to ProChem. You can find the instructions here. After reading through them, I realized I needed something to raise my fabric up so that when the snow melted, the fabric wouldn’t be sitting in a pool of water/dye. Rather than going to the store, I looked around the house and found some aluminum trays. I cut some holes in them, inverted them, and put them into a plastic container with those containers into another. The photo above shows one tray right side up, but I later inverted it.
Nancy gave instructions for adding urea to the water with the dye powder. I had some handy, so I used it.
I mixed my dyes using a heavy duty respirator. It was too cold outside for me to work.
Nancy also described a method of mixing the snow with the dye is a bowl rather than just pouring it on, although pouring it onto the snow also works.
There was a lot of dye that went all over my work table, despite me trying to be tidy. I decided to soak it into watercolor paper to later use in some other project.
Here's the snow as it is starting to melt.
And here is the finished fabric (I only did three pieces) and some of the water color paper.
a close-up of one area of the piece below
the second piece - it's soft, but pretty
This and the one under it are three views of the same fabric. I had some large blotches in places from where the fabric fell into the pool of dye beneath the pan.
Luckily this piece is large - 60 by about a yard - so the waste isn't too bad.
one side of the watercolor paper
the other side
one side of the watercolor paper
the other side of the watercolor paper
All in all, not bad. I’m off to San Francisco for Photoshop World where the weather is predicted to be in the mid-60s and sunny. Here it’s very, very cold and snowy. When I get home, and if there is more snow, I’ll give it another try. This time I’ll raise the fabric higher.
January 24th, 2011 at 10:43 am
I love these! They would make great textures!
January 24th, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Yummy! Beautiful soft pastel colors. Great designs on the watercolor paper. I have to try it!
January 25th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Hi Gloria,
Thank you for taking the time to post Nancy Breland ‘s tutorial on your blog.
It is quite thorough.
Enjoy your trip to the west coast.
LuAnn in Oregon (originally from North Plainfield, New Jersey)
http://luannkessi.blogspot.com/
kessi@pioneer.net
January 25th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
For Nancy’s complete tutorial, be sure to visit ProChen’s site. :)
January 26th, 2011 at 5:56 am
Honestly, I am more in love with the watercolor paper than the cloth. Did you wet the paper and lay it on top of the spilled dye? Or???
January 26th, 2011 at 11:17 am
These are gorgeous. I really like the way the watercolor paper turned out. HMMM…
January 26th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Very, very pretty.
I really love the effects of the dye on the watercolor paper! I’m going to have to use some paper instead of rags to clean up my own snow-dye messes. Two questions — what type/press of paper were you using and did you put snow on the paper too? I just love those patterns.
January 26th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Wow.. Gloria.. these turned out sooo beautiful.. Good idea with the foil… Laura
January 27th, 2011 at 10:44 pm
The watercolor paper is 140 lb. I used both cold and hot pressed paper. I used the dye that was on the table put the paper onto it, flipped the paper, and put the dye onto the other side. I’d do this a lot, both with left over dyes and paints. The papers make great basis.
I took some photos of a journal using the watercolor papers that I’ll get on here soon.
August 26th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Wonderful results!!
I could not open the link to the instructions – see the copied part below.
“Nancy Breland of Pennington, NJ provided a set of detailed instructions on snow dyeing to ProChem. You can find the instructions here.”
Could you please help me with the instructions as I am all set to try it out myself?
I still have to consider ways to obtain snow as I live in the warm provice of Limpopo in south Africa!
Thanx
Saartjie
Thanx.
Saartjie