Paper dip-dyeing: Take 2

My rainbow-obsessed middle daughter was getting on my case about having a craft session like we did last year. Sure thing, I said, and tried to make a few modification from last time, being that one is supposed to learn from prior experiences. I made the green tea and turmeric dyes much, much stronger and filtered the turmeric through a coffee filter. Sorry about the lack of pictures, iPhoto ate them. I think it heard me bitching about apple iProducts on the internet. My bad.

At the kids' suggesting, we added a blueberry dye that was a total winner. We boiled a handful of blueberries in a little water, mashed with a potato masher and then strained the juice. Plain, it's a beautiful deep violet (7th from the top in the picture). Add some baking soda and it makes a purplish gray that later dries into a beautiful green (9th down)! Who knew? Here's a picture of the full color palette and one of the set-up:



 

The beet juice was made like the blueberry juice and came out really thick and intense. The cabbage juice was frozen from last year and definitely a bit pale in comparison. We played with the pH-indicator properties of red cabbage juice to make three different hues.

This time, we used rice paper, which took the color beautifully but was really fragile when wet. Still looking for the perfect paper - maybe I'll shop in Germany on my next visit. For folding and more detail on the 'how to', refer to the old post and the links in it.

A bit of a gallery of our artwork: