Beloved Bijou's Craft Blog: Dyeing Doilies with Alcohol Ink

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Dyeing Doilies with Alcohol Ink

Hello my lovelies,

I've been on this alcohol ink kick lately, as you've probably guessed based on my previous posts DIY Alcohol Ink and DIY Shimmer Spritz Experiment. Well, here's another!

I have been saving various vintage handkerchiefs and doilies that are stained, intending to do something cool with them. In most cases I can use OxyClean and super hot water to remove any stains, but there are a few that just won't come clean. Recently I decided to experiment with alcohol inks.

Unfortunately, I didn't take photos of my process so I'll just try to explain what I did.

Basically I just decided what pattern I wanted and which colors I wanted to go where.

I used the Wild Plum and Denim, combined with a hot pastel pink one that I made myself.

The Wild Plum is the darker purple color, the one I made myself is the lighter pink, and the blue parts are the denim ink.

I started by dabbing the plum ink just inside of the border, a little at a time, allowing it to bleed and spread.

Then I did the denim on the petals. Last I sprayed the hot pastel pink all over to help facilitate the ink to bleed and move and blend together. I used the inks again to fill in any gaps.

Next, I did the same thing with this one, dabbing the alcohol ink directly from the bottle onto the doily and allowing it to bleed and blend before I added more.

I allowed the doilies to dry completely before I soaked them in boiling water.

In my final step I boiled some water and poured it into a plastic bowl that I didn't care about.

I did the 1st one first and allowed it to soak, stirring occasionally, until the water had completely cooled. I then drained and rinsed it in cold water until the water was mostly clear.

Then, I repeated the process, adding this little round doily to the mix. I realized the 1st time around that I was wasting ink in the heat setting process, and that I could probably be dyeing some more fabric at the same time. I was right. This came out so cute!