More from the dye pot, and making a rubber stamp

As you may remember from yesterday's post, I have been playing with dying wool with Koolaid this week.

After an extremely succesful batch, using a HOT batch of Koolaid (literally, I mixed the stuff in very hot water), I decided to have a go at using the same batch of dye (there was still considerable color in it) to dye another batch of wool roving.

Lesson learned --- it works much better if it's hot.

The pieces of roving on the left of the picture are the original color (the top one is a dyed roving I bought online, the bottom one is some of the blended Jacob Sheep fleece). The pieces on the right are after soaking for about four hours in the vat of cooled Koolaid.

I'm actually very pleased with the blue gray batch --- I'm thinking it will work well on a little bird.

So, still no purple --- the red was hardly changed. I guess I will be making up a small batch of grape to dye some of the Jacob Sheep fleece to get my purple.

We made a little shopping trip yesterday --- needed to pick up some things at the grocery store, and we decided while we were out we'd stop off in the local Hobby Lobby.

The fabric there on the left is for a project we're designing specifically for the State Fair this year. I'll be talking more about that as the design comes together.

The paint and that thing that looks like an enormous thin eraser are for the complex cloth project. My original idea was to get some of those white erasers, but it turns out that buying this block for carving was a better deal --- more square inches for the buck.

So, when I got home I decided I'd play with the idea and see just how difficult this was going to be.

In this picture you can see the progression of the project.

Top left is a print out of a picture of an aspen leaf.

Top right is the line drawing I made on tracing paper that is the "essence" of the leaf. By turning the tracing paper over (putting the original pencil drawing against the rubber) I drew over the lines and made the marks to be cut on.

Bottom left is the finished stamp (ready to glue down to a block of wood for a handle). I wanted to create something that looked like a sort of mirroring image side to side.

Botom right is the first stamping.

This is truly one of those "Did I Do That?!" moments. You know, when you see an idea in your head and you try the technique you think will work and it comes out even better than you imagined.

I can hardly wait to start stamping some of these images on the fabric!!

But first I have a maple leaf and some maple seeds that I want to make into similar stamps. Then I'll have to create a padded work surface to do that stamping on.

It's really exciting when something goes this well!!!

And lest you think I'm the only one that gets new toys when we visit the craft store, behold the new brush set we picked up for the DH!

We also got a new set of tube watercolors and some watercolor paper for him to play with.

The brushes are all laid out like that because I was measuring to make a fabric carrying case for these. Even though they were not terribly expensive, we believe in taking good care of our art tools so they will last longer --- if we do that we can spend our money on materials for making more art instead of replacing tools!

I had a nice piece of fabric left over from some bag making that will become the case for these --- pictures to follow dearies!!