Shiva Fabric, Shipping Tags and Payne's Grey

Updating what I've been doing to the sample piece that was posted a week ago. I'm slowly getting around to pushing the surface further, it's been punctuated with bouts of work.

Anway I applied various inks, Ranger Inks and Tsukineko Walnut Inks, to the surface, it was too white. Now that it has air dried overnight I will heat set the color with an iron and rinse the excess off of the surface. The Ranger Inks I've been using are the Adirondak line, they are in spray bottles and have a tendancy to crock off very easy. The green didn't prove to be wash fast in the past, (the color green I'm using is called Lettuce), but I didn't heat set it with the iron. The reds were very washfast w/o heat setting.

So this begs to be anwsered why would I want to use them on any other surface then? I used the Ranger Ink Pads on shipping tags, one of the colors was called Soot, the other Old Paper. I really like the texture the pads leave on the paper. I did a couple of tags by simply pressing them onto the ink pad. The remaining tags I dropped into a cochineal dye bath and the Payne's Grey dye bath.

Payne's Grey (for a light to medium color) to get this color on fabric/fibers using natural dyes: first an indigo bath, two dips in a weak bath. Rinse/wash the fabric to get rid of the excess indigo. The place fabrics/fibers into a dye bath of Oak Gall Nut Extract, two heaping tablespoons, and a tiny bit of iron mordant, about 1/4 teaspoon. The iron turns the seeminly unimportant drab Oak Gall Extract bath from blah beige to pewter grey. Most excellent color is to be had.

You could overdye any number of colors with this dye bath and end up with a rainbow of exciting colors. Lessen the amount of Oak Gall Extract, to as little as 1/4 teaspoon of extract, if you want to simply tone down another color.