ONE STITCH AT A TIME

THEME:  Anything Goes with Nature
DIGI: Project #1 Chemistry 
DIGI: Project 2# Baby Bees
ARTIST: #1 Sentimental Susan
ARTIST: #2 My Heart Pieces

Welcome to my Chemistry Lab!  I have recently discovered EBRU, or Marbling Art, which is a Turkish style of underwater art.

Typically done with a mixture called "size" - a mixture made up of many ingredients, cooked on the stove top in stages and cooled - and I have been doing my EBRU art with this method - I decided that I'd like to experiment with my own substitutes for "size."

With NATURE being our theme - I decided to get out the ALMOND MILK, believing it was pretty much the consistency of the "size" that I currently have in my fridge in a 5 gallon tub.

And there it began.  

I have logged the process in pictures, so I'll save the words, other than to describe what needs to be described.  If there are any questions, feel free to pm me on FB or ask a question within the comments.

I hope you enjoy EBRU ART as much as I do.  And be sure to enter our challenge over at OSAAT. The Theme of Nature gives SOOOOOO much to work with, myself choosing paper, inks, almonds and soy.

PROJECT # 1

FIRST STEP: Your Ingredients

Soy Almond Milk (Vanilla just smells good!)
Bowl (any size - judge your paper desire) and a pic on your computer screen of your yummalicious grandbaby, well, it just inspires! {heart} 

experiment with all kinds of different paper - paper towels, kleenex, gloss, watercolor, printer, canvas (untreated), cotton....

dye inks and fill your container with about 1/2 inch of milk - experiment with this as well - you may get a completely different effect! I started with food coloring inks, but you will see, they do not spread in Almond Milk but afterward I tried "regular milk" (blech!) lol and they spread really well.  I then (for my art) switched to using all my Stampin' Up and Close To My Heart Dye Refills

and of course last but not least..... JAVA, JAVA, JAVA!!!







SECOND STEP:  Start Adding drops of Dye Inks one drop at a time, one color at a time.

you can see the food coloring was not too dandy at dispersing in soy or Almond milk so if you are going to use it - use regular milk.

Here is the point I switched to my other dye ink Refills.

 You can see they start to spread as soon as you drop them into the milk and when you add another color inside the last color it immediately won't touch the side of the last color but shoots out to the edge of it instead...

Here I change the color look completely by adding yellow - you can see it dissipates the red and takes it over, leaving only a small red ring around it - still being able to see the original dye colors - the green ring and the blue ring.

THIRD STEP: In this photo, I take a long skewer and start to gently draw into the color and pull it away from itself - taking the green and drawing it into the centre from all sides.  You can see how you can draw any color in any direction.  You poke the skewer in (gently) draw it to where you want to go in a smooth action and abruptly stop and raise the skewer straight up so as to not disturb any of the "flow" of the milk.  You don't want the rest of the milk to move, only what you are drawing.  Experiment to get your touch.

Here I have begun a Chevron pattern to show you what is possible.  You can see the wooden skewer (you can buy them in packs of 50) on the left bottom side as I am drawing from top to bottom, finishing with the left side of the container.  Notice how different it is from the above picture.  You need to let the ink completely settle before you start another design.  In between each design, I put in paper to take a print.

AND BEYOND THIS...THERE ARE A BAZILLION MORE STEPS, INGREDIENTS, BASE PRODUCTS, DRAGGING TOOLS ETC. YOU CAN ENVISION AND USE - JUST ADDING YOUR OWN IMAGINATION.

Here I added white dye paint.  You can see it cut straight through the blue making the blue swirl and swirl into little swirls and break apart.  The white pigment dye is very strong.  It pulled apart all the other colors.

I absolutely LOVE this picture and will likely use it as background paper.

In fact, I encourage you to snap pics of the process to do just that!

Here I wanted to see what would happen if I added different things.  I added drops of hand sanitizer.  It pulled the purple up from the bottom and split each "egg" into 4's or so.

I then tried eye glass cleaner, which had no effect.

Here I sprayed some Dylusions white paint and black paint.  The black penetrated the colors but the white (likely acrylic, while the black is dye based) just sat on top.

I then added some gold metallic antiquing oil based "paint" - real paint.  It flooded in between the colors.

After making several prints, I began again with the yellow ranges.  This is yellow, and black.

I added brushed orange here and it moved the black to become moss green and rise to the surface and created veins of black and purple, splitting up the particles of the black dye base.

Here I added Hand Sanitizer again and it pulled all the black to the surface.  Alcohol must have a significant effect. Notice the yellow and brushed orange rings.

This is just a further generation of the same thing, time passing and watching the process of the dyes generating further spinning action.

Here I used a skewer and pulled all the black into the centre to the one orange ring.

I added some green and it separated everything that was done above and the dye quickly separated back into the marbles with the concentric rings around them and the empty spaces of milk were predominantly obvious.  I took a skewer and ran it in spirals.

Paper in the ink - experiment with leaving the paper in for a second, for a long time, pushing to the bottom, leaving on the surface, etc.

After you print each piece of paper, put it on a piece of plastic to dry.  I used a shower curtain and put it on 1/2 the curtain.  Once I was finished (likely 50 prints of different paper and colors of dye combos, I folded the other 1/2 of the shower curtain over the papers and moved it into a room where it would have lots of air to dry and not be in a room with any traffic.  Everything was dry within a few hours.  There is no milk smell as the dye transforms the properties of the milk completely.

I captured a few seconds of the process on vid for you to show you what I have described above. I hope this helps illuminate the process of separation of the inks. There is no editing but my computer seems to have taken an 8 minute vid and condensed it to this! Sorry folks, a video master I am not - but hopefully it shows you something of the process.

These prints, by far my own personal favourite colors - very Hawaiian to me - came out of the above process colors.

These are some of the results of the still photos above.

I've included even the ones that I considered "flops" so you can see "it is a process."

 Some of the results on different types of paper.  My favs - Gloss Paper (it totally Marbled - Left)

Results - Far right on water color paper. Really vibrant in real light

The long strips are printer paper.

This is only my SECOND TIME dong EBRU ART - so please be gentle on me!!!!  {heart}  My enthusiam is in THE PROCESS of experimentation, color dispersing and a DIY grab anything in site and "bake an ART cake" with new results every time.  I feel like the kid in the candy store or the kid watching fire-cookies (fireworks) and being in awe when they explode.  This is what the inks do.

I hope you have enjoyed this little look into EBRU ART.  I look forward to bringing you other experiments into which I happily indulge!

PROJECT #2

Happy Sunday!

Samara

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