Thursday 28 October 2010

AUSTERITY SPRAYS

Good morning, after a sleepless night, I thought that you might like a little taster of the type of idea contained in THE SMASHEES
So here are my AUSTERITY SPRAYS - The lovely spray colours that you can buy are very expensive so here is an UPCYCLE & RE-CYCLE idea
Most of this you should already have in your kitchen
Find a spray bottle, rummage at the back of your cleaning cupboard or in the garage, you know the ones with a little bit of summat left in them, cant bear to throw away.  Use up whatever is in it & then give the bottle a jolly good scrub.  No point in using this to spray your work if it still has bleach in it!!!!! is there?

One nice (or maybe more) spray bottle.

Save up your tea bags or use the horrid ones kept for those people you dont like (only kidding) or the free ones that come in the post.
Bung a few (its not an exact science) in a saucepan along with about half a cup of water & give it a jolly good boil up.  Leave to go cold safely.  You have a creamy pinky spray or fabric & paper colour, easy - store it in a LABELED jam jar or water bottle - you know the ones with a spout - dont throw those away make great splurges (try spelling that!!) with those.  Please dont forget to label clearly.

Take a couple of teaspoons of any old coffee.  I had some awful coffee that I left in the jar & went all crystal like, splash on some hot water to dissolve & leave to cool.  Mid brown to dark brown here.
This is fun!!!!
Got any fruit or herbal teas?  Can get pale lemon & oranges & pinks
Now I know that natural dyeing requires a mordant - Alum, vinegar etc & there are lots of sites on the Internet with info on this.  These ideas are for paper & as background colour for fabric that is going to be further worked into.

How about FOOD COLOURING - you know the little cheap bottles of lovely colours, can make fab striped patterns on fabric with a paint brush & some food colouring.

Raid the garden or the fridge for onions & leaves, dont throw the  outside leaves of the cauliflower away, give it a boil up & see what you get!  Red onions - orange peel you know the stains that you get on your hands when peeling an orange? Eh?

All of these will give you cheap colours, okay you wont get intense ultramarine blue (can use cheap crayons for that!!) but you will get AUSTERITY COLOURS & a really good feeling of saving yourself some dosh

What if you dont like the colours, get some really thin paper & splosh it on there, or even old wallpaper (with no paste on - that has fungicide yuk)  these papers can be used as pages in a book - ohhhh The first SMASHEE project is LOLLIPOP LANE FOLIO .............happy day to you x

2 comments:

  1. Whatever your taking.........I need some! lolol

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brilliant ideas, as always, Shelagh - does your creative brain never switch off? You're always inspirational,and I'm going to look for empty spray bottles now.......

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment, regards Shelagh

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