Rebecca Desnos

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Tag: magazine

7th January 20175th January 2018

Plants Are Magic – the magazine

Plants Are Magic is a new magazine that I am starting and the first issue will be out in March 2017 – in print (yay!) and also offered as digital download.

It’s a magazine for makers, dreamers and plant lovers.Continue Reading →

by RobFOSBook4 Comments

Recent Posts

  • How to dye even colours (and why you might not want to)
  • Avocado Dye : FAQs / Top tips for pink
  • New napkins and thoughts on creating less waste
  • A shift in mind and space – what’s the future of the magazine?
  • Plants Are Magic – the magazine

Categories

  • Book
  • Commissions
  • Dye experiments
  • Dyeing
  • eBook
  • Jewellery
  • Painting
  • Uncategorised

Tags

Alder cones Avocado avocado dye Avocado skin avocado skins Bags Bamboo Beads Berries Blue Bundle dyeing Business cards Carrot tops Commissions Dandelions Dress eBook Eco printing Eucalyptus Experiments Fabric wrapping Flowers For the home Indigo Iron Jewellery magazine Mahonia Berries My process Onion skins Organic cotton Packaging Painting Paints Paper Pattern plants are magic Scarves Seaweed Shibori Soy Soya Soya milk Watercolour Woad
  • Remember the gorse flowers I dyed with last week? 🌼 These are the colours that the flowers made ✨😳
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Something mysterious happened with the first pot of dye and somehow the colour ended up pink! At the time, I blamed this on my aluminium pan not being clean enough - lavender was the last plant in there - but it was as clean as it normally is when I use it.. The colour is extremely rosy and fresh - it doesn't look like the colour from residue dye or a dirty pot at all πŸ€” It's bizarre. But there must have been a reaction in the pot with a trace of old dye.. and this pink developed gradually over night. See my IG story highlights for video clips.
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Right after this happened, I tried some flowers in a stainless steel pot and a caramel yellow colour developed as I'd originally expected. So it really must be something to do with the first dye pot.. Anyway, it's the prettiest pink colour on fabric, I'm just a bit surprised ✨
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The fabric is bamboo silk and linen and it's all been pretreated with soya milk as per my usual methods in my book/eBook.
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The only difference is the dye pot - aluminium vs stainless steel, but there must have been some traces of previous plants in the pan and that's what caused the pink to develop.
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I still have a bag of flowers in the freezer so I'm sure I'll continue to play with gorse in various pots to see what happens. Maybe it was just a one off?! Whatever caused it, it's been quite exciting πŸ˜„ Plant dyes never fail to keep me hooked...
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What's been your most surprising encounter with plant dyes?
  • I've been thinking a lot about workspaces lately... I do my dyeing in the kitchen and this room in the photo is basically a space for taking photos, arranging things, sewing/making, and for the children to play.
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I've been thinking that it would be nice to have a separate utility room one day for my dyeing, or even a shed? That way pots and dyes can be kept out of the kitchen.
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Or would it be better to just dye outdoors? It would be ideal for messy dye experiments but would be restrictive depending on the weather. But perhaps dyeing is more suited to the warmer months anyway (with all the fresh plants available to use 🌸🌱), and the rest of the year is better for sewing and other crafting?
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What's your set up? Do you dye in your kitchen, outdoors, or in an entirely separate area like a workshop/shed? Is your dyeing very seasonal - do you do more dyeing during the warmer months and other crafting during the darker months? Would love to know 🌿
  • Gorse flowers brought back from Cornwall by my mum -- the best kind of flower gift I could ever hope for 🌼
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Half of the petals have gone in the dye pot (I'm expecting a caramel/yellow) and the other half are in the freezer now. Gorse flowers freeze really well and don't turn brown as a lot of flowers tend to do when frozen (in my experience anyway). Remember my brown goldenrod that I took out of my freezer in the winter? πŸ™Š In contrast, these flowers will stay lovely and yellow when frozen βœ¨πŸ’›
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I haven't dyed with gorse for at least a year, or maybe longer (?!) so I'm excited to dye with it again 🌼
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It's considered an invasive plant in Australia and New Zealand, but in the UK we see it as such a cheery yellow plant and tend to love it πŸ˜„
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Have you dyed with gorse before? Does it grow where you are?
  • Have you seen my new blog post about getting the most even colours on fabric? It basically involves stirring and more stirring, but there are lots of other tips too ✨ Hope it's helpful for you 😊
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These scarves were dyed (a few months ago) with avocado skins (pink) and pomegranate skins (yellow) - two of my favourite dyes πŸ₯‘πŸ…πŸ’₯
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Pop across to my blog for a read πŸ’› (link is in my profile). I really enjoyed writing the post.. it's something that I can do when I'm trapped under a sleeping baby (I type on my phone πŸ˜„). It's really tricky working on the laptop at the moment so magazine progress has slowed down πŸ™ˆ and I haven't had the chance to do much dyeing this week either, but I can type on my phone haha πŸ‘ŒπŸ½ That's the way I write my monthly newsletters too... I use the notes on my phone for everything and email myself πŸ˜‚ Does anyone else work like this?
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Have a lovely Sunday whatever you're doing 🌿
  • How can we get the most even dye colours on fabric and clothing? Stirring, stirring and more stirring ✨ I give a run down of my best tips in a blog post that I've just written - if you're interested πŸ’š (linked in my profile).
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(Just as an added note: the colour of this cardigan is from avocado skins + modified with ferrous sulphate to make a grey/purple πŸ₯‘πŸ’œ The fabric is a viscose/linen blend).
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What are your best tips for dyeing the most even colours? 🌿
  • I've been keeping better records of my dye samples this year. I use this small notebook and I just staple the fabric swatches to the page and write notes ✏️ It only takes a few minutes per page and it's really enjoyable.
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I will staple in leaves as I go 🌿 and press flowers when I come to dyeing with flowers in the summer 🌼 It's going to be a lovely book to look through in the future.
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What's your favourite method for recording your dye experiments?
  • Some recent plant dye colours 🌿πŸ₯‘πŸπŸŒΈπŸ’œπŸ–€
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All the fabric is plant derived (cellulose) and pretreated with soya milk as per the instructions in my eBook/book Botanical Colour at your Fingertips 🌱
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I'll give a run-though of fabric + dyes for anyone who is interested 🌿🌸😊
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Top row: 1. Avocado skin on linen, 2. Eucalyptus + iron modified on bamboo silk, 3. Lavender on bamboo silk.
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Middle row: 1. Eucalyptus + iron modified on linen, 2. Avocado skin on bamboo silk, 3. Eucalyptus on linen.
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Bottom row: 1. Lavender on linen 2. Eucalyptus on bamboo silk. 3. Avocado skin + modified with iron on organic cotton.
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I've cut little squares out of these pieces of fabric to record the colours in my swatch book with notes, and now these larger pieces will be added to the pile for my quilt (which I am hand stitching at an incredibly slow rate of just a couple of pieces a week at the moment πŸ™Š).
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I love all the different textures together and plan to add more texture into the quilt. At the moment it's mostly cotton... but is calling out for the rougher linen and the silky bamboo textures.
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What's your favourite fabric to dye ~ at the moment or always? πŸ’š
  • Here are the rinsed and dried eucalyptus dye samples 🌿 I think I'm going to have a few weeks of eucalyptus excitement ahead of me with all the leaves I have πŸ˜„ I want to dye everything grey now 😍
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These fabric pieces are linen and bamboo and have all been pretreated in soya milk, as per the methods in my book Botanical Colour at your Fingertips (also available as an instant download eBook on my website).
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The sand colour was from the first dye bath, the orangey colour was from the same dye used a second time, and the grey was made by adding ferrous sulphate crystals into the second lot of dye dye. Tannins (naturally that natural occur in the leaves) + iron make the most incredibly deep shades.
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I'm going to add some samples into my book now.. and staple this leaf onto a page too πŸƒ This year I'm keeping better records of my dye colours with notes ✨ I'll share some of my pages with you soon.
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Hope you have a lovely Easter Day if you celebrate, or just a lovely Sunday.
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Are you planning any crafting for today? Or maybe a lovely walk? πŸ’š

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