Hoarding and Dyeing . . .

I'm working on a tag book I bought from Artful Illusions. The "kit" consisted of various sizes of multiple tags.  Of course it involves lots of stamping and inking and junque, but I also wanted to dye some of my tags.

Enter the hoarder in me.  I knew I had some Making Memories packets of dyes somewhere.  Ah ha:

Remember these?  I have only 2 colors but really wished I had purchased more.  What was I thinking way back when?

So I mixed some of the dye packets in water (1 packet to 1 cup just in case you too have some!)

So far, not too exciting until . . . the tags were dipped in and I saw the results:

beautiful aqua color.  This next one was a happy mistake.  I dipped into the wheat color and layed it on the same drenched paper towel as the blue tag.  Because the paper towel was already wet with the blue color, some of that color soaked into the wheat color tag and I got a bit of a variation:
 

Cool eh?

Then I moved onto coffee.  This next photo is pretty disgusting.  Move the children out of the room. It's so disgusting that Bill came into the studio asking if he should throw this out with the garbage.  Does he not recognize art in the making (she says facetiously).

 Here's the recipe I used:

1 part brewed coffe

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1 part cheap (really cheap) instant coffee granules

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2 flavored tea bags

I add flavored tea bags to my coffee dye to cut the smell aroma of the coffee.  If I don't put flavored tea bags into the mix, the aroma of the coffee tends to be quite powerful and lingers for a very long time. I am a HUGE (literally and figure-atively) coffee drinker, but some people don't like the smell of coffee. 

Dip the tag into the mixture.  Drain on paper towels.  Let dry or if you're impatient you may use a heat tool to dry the tag.  Rub the excess coffee crystals off the tag.

If you're new to this coffee dyeing thing, the reason for the crystals is to give more depth of color.  See all those little dark spots on the brown tag?

You may not want your tag quite so dark.  If that's the case, then skip the coffee granules and just use leftover coffee.  You may also add more water to the coffee to dilute the color even more.

One more thing:  The tag may be dipped into coffee without using the instant coffee granules.  Once the tag is taken out of the coffee mix, sprinkle a few granules on top of the tag to get those deep tiny spots of color.  Let dry.

 
 
 

Comments

[Lori]

Great techniques! Love the coffee idea, now if I could just save some from the morning instead of drinking it.....