My Private Art Retreat - Day 2

Well, here we are half-way through day 2 of my Private Art Retreat :)

Today started with some lovely Genmaicha tea...

...and an archeological dig through my craft studio (aka. closet). As hoped, I emerged victorious having successfully unearthed lots of crafty goodies purchased on a whim and usually from the sale table. Most of these have languished at the bottom of a bin or basket for many, many months but have survived recent organizational attempts. They therefore must have some true value or interest to me.

Here are some of the treasures I found and which have now made it onto the schedule of events at this sweet little art retreat I am giving myself.

Just about every type of antiquing solution ever made by Sophisticated Finishes - all unopened...

some no-bake Makin's Clay in earthy colors and a Sculpey face mold...

an Easy Cast resin kit and cabochon mold...

a one gallon zip-lock full bag of batik fabric scraps with fusible webbing on the back

and two odd sewing machine-esque thingys picked up at garage sales someplace and which I have no idea about how they work or IF they work.

These are all on my list of wonderful art retreat activities but I started my crafty day with some more tea staining and even remembered to take some "before" and "after" shots.

The fabric and trim before:

 Here are the tea bags all bundled and ready to go (I use 12 bags for every batch which is roughly 1 gallon of water). I'm using some very cheap tea bags which were bought on a whim at a dollar store somewhere. The tea was SOOOOOO bad that it wasn't worth drinking but that makes it perfect for this type of activity.

I boil the water and into the pot they go!

I let them steep FOREVER! well... for a really long time, at least... around 10 to 15 minutes. Then I take the bags out, giving them a good squeeze to get all the pretty brown-ness out of them and add the pre-washed (and still wet from the washing machine) linens and laces.

 

I let them stay in there for a REALLY long time - up to 1/2 an hour or longer because I want the fabric to absorb as much of the pretty color as possible! I also stir the pot every once in a while.

When I can't hardly wait any longer (or need to use the burner for some coffee or something), I remove the fabric from the pot and rinse it until the water runs clear. I pop everything in the dryer on high and wait (very impatiently) to see the final result. The color when the piece is dry will be lighter than when it's wet but I knew when I removed these pieces from the tea bath that this was going to be a great batch!

Here are some "after" shots along side the original "before"s. I tried to lay the fabric out basically the same way and on the same background cloth so the color change would be easy to see. Digital photography is a finicky thing - even though the color of the background cloth appears different in the "before" and "after" shots, it is the same. I hope you will be able to notice the wonderful color change in the original fabric pieces.

Before...

 

...and after.

 

Before...

 

...and after.

 

Before...

 

...and after.

And already the afternoon is upon me! So much to do! Yay! :)