Blueberry Dyeing Collage

I mentioned last week that one of the recent tutorials over at Wanderlust was about making "inks" from regular household stuff. Most intriguing (I thought), were the results using blueberries! I managed to get various shades of lilac/blue/purple/magenta and these seemed to depend on what surface they were applied to. Here's a bit of a summary ...

Have a look at the three brush strokes on the left ... all done using the blueberry "ink", the pink one is still wet and the two purple/blue/grey ones are in various stages of drying.

 As a background wash applied to a gessoed page ...

... just a washy looking light purple with hints of darker blue.  Other things, on the left, also dyed with the blueberry solution - watercolour paper (light blue, dark blue), ex-tea bags (bright red) and some yarn and cheesecloth (magenta/burgundy)! Very interesting!

Here's a few more pics ... some close-ups ...

Another strange thing about the way the blueberry ink changed colour ... see those tall, narrow sticking up pieces along the bottom edge? They were torn from the bright red, ex-tea bag tissue paper but as soon as I glued them down they turned greyish/blue! Not a hint of that lovely reddish colour!! But the sliver of tissue around the the little picture is the "correct" colour!

Here's the whole page without it being chopped in half ...

This page just grew. It had a mind of it's own. And it wouldn't even suggest a focal point until nearly finished! Now I don't normally use cliches, (or any sort of wording really) on my "art", but this actually seemed appropriate. (And I had to strongly resist the temptation to "computer print" the wording, instead using my own writing.)

Now, if I start waffling on about "What It All Means" we'll be here all night. So let's just leave it at that?

And here's most of the stuff I used ... including salvaged tea bag tissue and one of my handmade stamps. Nearly all of the tissue paper is ex-tea bag!