Dye Vs. Paint

I want to talk about paint. I love paint. I first learned about painting cloth from Mickey Lawler’s SkyDyes book. I bought the paint and colors she said to buy. That was Setacolor acrylic paints for textiles. I love them. I have since tried all the Jacquard paints and Golden Fluid Acrylics as well as screenprinting inks. I love to paint on pimatex cotton, a broadcloth with a high thread count. I think the paint looks better on this cloth. I love the ease of using paints. If I want to quickly change the appearance of cloth, I get out my stamps and paints and in a matter of minutes, I have the look I want. Paint dries fairly quickly. But a person can sink a lot of money into paints. The paint is also a surface treatment which does change the hand of the cloth some.

Now let’s talk about dyes. If you are a dyer of cloth, you already have what you need to make your own paint. You can make the paint very inexpensively. You are no longer working with pigments, as with paint, but now you are working with dye powder. There is a process with dye powder. If you are going to paint with dye powder, you first have to mix a chemical water that has a few different things in it. This is to help keep the dye paint wet enough for the batching time that is needed. Then you need to have a thickening agent to make your dye powder solution thick like paint. Since it is dye powder instead of pigment, there is a different consistency to it. If you are going to do layers of design, you will need to let each layer dry a bit, but not completely (remember,to batch, the dye needs to stay a bit damp), before continuing to add the next layer. (You could let each layer batch and dry between layers; this will take forever!) Dyes also love 70+ degree weather to batch in. Dyes do not change the hand of the fabric (this part I love). Oh yeah, one more thing: dye needs soda ash in order to make the chemical reaction. You must either soak the cloth in a soda ash solution, then air dry the cloth (start the day before you want to paint), or add it to your dye paint as you get ready to use it. This can be one long process!

So which is your favorite and why? I am basically thinking out loud here. I welcome anyone’s input if I have overlooked anything and I would like your take on painting with either medium.

soy wax screen design with ink

Dryer Sheets….

Thanks to everyone who has made a guess.  I plan to announce the winner and final total at 6 p.m. central  time.  27 of you left a number.  You still have time as of this writing if you haven’t posted one.

Here are some pictures of some of the individual sheets.  You could lay these out flat and paint them and get more paint on them.  For my use, I don’t want a block of color, but just a bit of color and transparency for layering. They can still have paint added to them as well as stamping, and I’m even wondering how they would take a gel medium photo transfer…hmmmm, I may have to try that!

How Many Dryer Sheets…

…can one collect? I have been saving them for quite some time. I painted these this morning. If anyone wants to take a guess how many there are in this picture….when I iron them, I will count them and the person who gets closest to the actual number will get a prize! So leave your guess in the comment section. How many painted dryer sheets are in these 6 containers?

Let’s Talk About Paint

I have been wanting to blog my observations about the Adirondack paint that I recently purchased. I love, love, love, the Adirondack Dabbers. I got those in Chicago. This is acrylic paint with a sponge dabber in the lid. You simply turn the bottle upside down and “dab” the paint onto your stamp or whatever. The two colors I purchased, Espresso and Lettuce, are very rich, and I am looking for more of those.

At Paducah I was looking for more of the dabbers, but did not find them. I did find Adirondack acrylics. Thinking these were the same as the paint in the dabbers, I purchased them (and they were half off). I reasoned that I could just use my own dabbers. They wouldn’t have quite the convenience of the others, but I could make do. These paints turned out to be metallic, and I was quite surprised because I did think I was purchasing the same kind of paint. There was nothing in the labeling to indicate that they were anything but regular acrylics, so a word to the wise…but they are nice thick paints.