Hand Dyeing Papers



I love using hand dyed papers for book making, art journaling, card making, junk journals, scrap booking, and pretty much any other paper crafting project I can think of.

While hubby was away, I set time aside to do some serious crafting as well as some dye baths.  Tea dye baths to be more specific. I used a large tub from Ikea and various glass bowls from the kitchen to hold the tea bath water.  Since there's ample room in the garage, I staged almost everything in there.  This way, I didn't have to worry about the cats getting into anything and it's always a little warmer in the garage so it speeds up the drying time. I also spread out some old rag towels to lay the papers on so to not make too much of a mess.

As far as papers go, anything is a possibility.  One time, I hand dyed over 40 sheets of printer paper and made a vintage inspired, blank book for hubby as a gift. This time, I'm using old book sheets, sketch paper, card stock scraps, and printer paper.  This will give me a variety of sizes and textures to play with in future projects.  Generally, I like to grab more paper than I need so that I have loads of options.






For the dye stuffs, I'm using teas, including: British Breakfast, pomegranate, oolong mandarin, and mint. This will give me a variety of colors to play with.






British Breakfast tea, or coffee, is always a good tea bath to do as it has a great color pay off and easily transforms almost any paper.  The pomegranate and mint teas were alright, but gave a very subtle color.  The oolong mandarin was the most unique tea bath I've done yet. It gave a subtle pinky - purple color. Where I pooled the tea on the card stock scraps it left beautiful, intense colors.  However, the pink color didn't work that well on sketch paper which I did a test dye of. I was hoping to make a thick sketch book / journal with those, but this fail just means that I get to get creative again and come up with something else. I think next time I'll try dyeing papers with beets to get a pink to burgundy color.


















I already have plans for some of these papers in up coming projects that I cannot wait to start now!

Happy creating, and happy paper crafting!







For business inquires, contact me at: KristinVictoriaArt@gmail.com

To view original paintings, visit: etsy.com/shop/KristinVictoriaArt

To view prints on various items, visit: society6.com/KristinVictoria

To view more photos from the studio and my life on flickr, visit: tinyurl.com/kvartflickr

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