Monday, December 27, 2010

Faux Tea-dyed flowers

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Faux Tea-dyed flowers
I made my own Christmas cards this year, and since I had to make so many, I kept the design VERY simple. It takes too long to color a cute little image on that many cards, so instead I used some hand-dyed paper flowers. You can use this same effect on wide ribbon to make it look tea-dyed as well.

These flowers are very easy to make with Copic markers, and look really cool when you are done. Before you start, be sure to have plenty of clean scratch paper under your work, as this gets messy.

First, take your paper flower and scribble on it with a middle/dark color. For this flower, I used R59. The final color will be both lighter and darker than this color, so test a few colors to find the one that will end up matching your project the best.


Next, you need to add a lot of colorless blender. I like using an empty water-brush that has been filled with colorless blender. If you don't have a water-brush, then you can accomplish the same thing by dipping your colorless blender straight into the big refill bottle, then dripping the blender on. This will make the flower very wet and make the inks flow around similarly to if you were actually dying the flower.


Wherever you drip the blender, the color on the flower will start to bleed away from that area.

If you drip in the middle first then the color will run out to the petals more. If you drip a small drop onto each petal then it will push the color out to the edges of each petal. The second flower was soaked evenly all over, see how the colors muted more and ran together more? If you like this look then go for it.

Once you get the look you want, let the flower dry completely before touching it. If you have a drop of ink on your finger and touch the wet flower, then it will pick up that color. If there is color on the scratch paper under the flower it could pick up that ink as well.

Here are some variations on the effect. The small pink/purple flower has a nice 2 tone feel, with purple added to the edges only, pink in the middle, then blended from the middle out. The little brown flower was the same, just with one color. The larger flower was scribbled more randomly so the white spots are more irregular.

Here is one of my finished, simple Christmas cards. I hope this has given you some ideas. Tomorrow I'll post about upcoming Certification classes. Next week we have some exciting announcements for 2011, so stay tuned!

11 comments:

Carley said...

Oh my goodness I love this! OK so I have a few questions. How did you make the paper flowers did you have a punch? Next what is a water brush and where can you get that as well as the refill bottle of colorless blending? My email is CarleyCarter@gmail.com.
Thank you so much

Carley

slbt17 said...

very pretty! Thanks for sharing!
Sandra

Cheryl O said...

How beautiful, love how you did these flowers. Thank you for showing this technique!!!

marianne walker said...

Sorry, I forgot to say that the flowers are from Prima, and you just buy a big pack of them. A water-brush is a hollow, plastic brush that you can fill with water. I pick them up at art-supply stores for about $5. The big bottle of blender you can find all over, or run a search online Colorless Blender Refill 200cc. HTH!

marianne walker said...

If you do want to try this technique on punched flowers, use softer paper so the ink flows better. Prima flowers are almost as soft as thick newsprint, so the ink flows very nicely.

Ruthie said...

awesome! love this idea ... must get a refill of colorless blender solution & give it a try!

Lori Barnett said...

Super cool! Have you tried spraying them with the colorless blender in a little spritz bottle? THAT is way fun too!!! :)

Laura (sandytoz) said...

Thanks so much! In a pinch could I use an alcohol solution instead of colorless blender & a regular paintbrush?

marianne walker said...

yes, but the alcohol might make some of the dyes separate in unpredictable ways. If you're fine with the look, then go for it!

Tina said...

Ohhh those flowers are AWESOME!!!! Sooo excited for the new colors!! Would LOVE to have a swatch book... never got it bought yet!! Thanks for the chance!

Unknown said...

Very interesting! Thanks you
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