A TECHNIQUE DRIVEN Blog dedicated to mastery of surface design techniques. First we dye, overdye, paint, stitch, resist, tie, fold, silk screen, stamp, thermofax, batik, bejewel, stretch, shrink, sprinkle, Smooch, fuse, slice, dice, AND then we set it on fire using a variety of heat tools.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Final Batik for the month

I worked on some batik again over the weekend, but my camera batteries died and I wasn't able to get more til yesterday. Therefore, only tools & end products here.
This tool was an old mouse pad, cut into 3 circles, then glued with E6000 glue to some hard foam from a computer shipping box.

Circles were made with a variety of items:

Then, the piece was rewaxed using this gridded sink mat and re-dyed:

These were metal things I found at a hardware store a while ago. I tried to glue them to the foam, using E-6000 glue, but they only held for about 3 dips into the wax before it all fell apart. I've tried to glue these same things to a piece of wood, too, but they fell off that, too.

4 comments:

  1. Try Gorilla glue -- supposed to hold anything to anything.

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  2. Things I think I have learned over this month of playing with Shibori:

    1) Almost anything will make a great stamp to shape the wax.

    2) Abstract all-over patterns work out really well for background for additional techniques or foregrounds for fabric prior treated. Generally as a stand alone one-time technique, I find the results only mediumly interesting (See the circles above and then look at the circles with the drain mat. Much more interesting).

    2) Rosalita is the queen of painting with wax as a resist. (Have you seen her latest stuff??) I think I am a long way from trying that.

    3. Dye from light to dark.

    4.Soy wax is sooooo much nicer to get out of the fabric than regular wax.

    5. It is best to include little circles in your design to mask the drops (Tee Hee). Yep, a design element!

    So what have you learned in your experiments?

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  3. I agree, Judith, that you have to do more than a stand-alone technique to make your fabric more interesting. It's hard for me to think light to dark, or dark to light, but this month has given me a lot more experience in learning which way to go. Pretty much anything can be used as a stamp, and some things definitely work better than others do, and now I have a bunch of great tools to work with.

    I really feel these in-depth studies in technique are so worthwhile--concentrating on one thing for a whole month really helps me focus! Otherwise I tend to flip from one thing to another.

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  4. YEAH! That was the whole goal for this blog! I am sooooo excited you said that.

    I do find I try things once and then move on. But once doesn't teach you as much as repeated experiments--both your own and those of others you know. I learned a lot this month from the work of others participating.

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