PAPER DYEING
The other day I was preparing some fresh beetroot in order to make beetroot and orange soup. Rather than throwing the trimmings away, I boiled them for half an hour in water, and ended up with some gorgeous red juice.
I put this in an old spray bottle to use for dyeing paper. While I was at it, I made up a batch of tea to use in the same way.
Layers and lace
Most people do their tea dyeing in a large flat baking tray, immersing the whole sheets into the water. I prefer to lay the papers out on my “wet” surface and spray them with the dye. The technique works very well, but the results vary quite a lot according to the type of paper or card. It works very well with normal printer paper at 80 gsm.
In the past I have had great success with layering 80 or 100 gsm papers with plastic lace table runners and mats. For some reason the texture on these imprints onto the paper, showing the finest detail. My plastic lace has rather large patterns and I wanted something a bit smaller, so I chose a piece of beaded black lace from my stash and tried the technique with that.
In the above photo you can see the tea-dyed papers on the left and the beetroot ones on the right, still wet after I had finished spraying and layering them.
With the top one on the beetroot side, I decided to have some fun. I added some spatters of brown and gold inks while the beetroot juice was still very wet, and the result is gorgeous! Not sure what I shall use that one for yet.
A selection of papers
This was by way of an experiment, really. I selected various different A3 cards and papers. I have some white card which has a smooth surface which is probably some kind of sizing, and this behaves differently from the normal card. These cards are normal printer paper – the plain one is definitely 160 gsm and the smooth one comes from an unmarked packet but feels about the same thickness.
I also dyed some hot pressed watercolour from my new A3 pad, and a smaller piece of cold pressed watercolour paper, both 300 gsm. This smaller piece was for a specific project which I shall be writing about in due course.
The results
On some of the papers, the lace was a disappointment. It didn’t seem to work very well with the beetroot juice, and it was a bit patchy on the tea-dyed papers. The pattern did turn out to be larger than I’d hoped so I probably won’t be able to use it for the intended purpose, but it’s only paper (and most of it cheap at that) and it can always be used in other projects.
The smooth paper didn’t do so well, and ended up with a rather grainy appearance. I’ve had this result with this sort of paper before – it doesn’t seem to do well to get very wet, and it also buckles much more than the normal plain card. However, the texture is interesting, and it’s definitely useable, especially with the addition of further media later.
The beetroot dyed papers
These are the beetroot papers which I did with the lace. All that’s happened is that they have got a slightly mottled appearance, with no actual pattern. I don’t mind, as this just makes them a bit more interesting than if the were just plain pink. The colour is quite subtle but definitely pink. The smooth card also seemed to have developed a bit of green in places as it dried. They look more pink in real life. All these papers have been under heavy books overnight after being thoroughly dried and the smooth one hasn’t flattened out as much as I’d have liked. I probably won’t bother with this card again as the quality isn’t good enough.
Here is the one with the ink spatters. I really like this one. It was done on the normal 160 gsm card.
This is the A4 cold pressed watercolour paper, dyed with beetroot juise and the black lace. You can see that the pattern hasn’t come out at all, but there are lots of subtle variations in the texture. I have set this aside for a specific art piece
The tea dyed papers
These were definitely more successful with the lace than the beetroot ones, but the results were a bit patchy.
The one on the left is the 300 gsm hot pressed watercolour paper, and the one on the right is the 160 gsm card. You can see how much better the watercolour paper has taken up the tea dye.
For comparison, here are some coffee dyed sheets I did back in 2022, using a plastic lace table runner. The detail is incredible.
