In this facebook group I'm in we have seen a lot of ice dyeing since it's fun, easy, beginner friendly and ideal for summertime. People have been wondering what effects temperature and therefore melt speed has on the pattern that emerges. I had ice dyed in the summer last year and the pattern came out very much like watercolor and I also did some in the winter which came out crisper, which led me to believe that cooler melt temps would give colder looking patterns. Boy was I wrong! I also wanted to find out if ice size had any effect, so I crushed up some ice in our mortar/pestle.
I presoaked for an hour or so in soda ash solution, squeezed out excess water. Crumpled onto draining trays set in drip-catching trays. Covered in both regular and crushed ice. Sprinkled dry dye powder on top, and set in their respective temperatures. The one I set outside was inside a clear plastic box with lid in direct sunlight when the shade temps were around 100 F. It melted almost completely in an hour. The fridge temperature was apparently too cool for the ice to melt at a decent rate, and so after 4 hours, I brought it out into the house temperature, so maybe 80-85 or thereabouts, and it melted by 2 hours later. A rinse and a soapy hot wash and hang to dry.
 |
| to melt outside |
 |
| to melt in fridge |
 |
| iced |
 |
| iced |
 |
| t=0 |
 |
| dyed, t=0 |
 |
| t=1 hour |
 |
| t= 4 hours |
 |
| t= 4 hours |
 |
| rinse |
 |
| L->R: itajime; fridge; outside; outside |
The itajime is from another project and another post. Maybe later. Maybe if blogger's formatting didn't suck so much I would have had it done today too.
No comments:
Post a Comment