Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Soy Wax Batik






A few friends and I got together for an art play day and experimented with Soy Wax Batik. The nice thing about the soy wax is that it is water soluble, so it is easier to remove the wax than having to iron it out as with regular batik. We melted it in small electric griddles, and used a number of different things to stamp with: wooden stamps, metal items, foam stamps, egg beater, thread spools, whatever we could get our hands on. We also drew free form designs with an eyedropper or traditional tjanting. After you do the wax design, you paint the cloth with thickened dye. The dye has to be thickened since the soy wax is water soluble.

Here are some pictures of what I did. These are about 36 x 45 inches, and there are a few detail shots. I have only done one layer of batik and dye, and I am trying to decide whether or not I will leave them as is, do more layers of batik, or perhaps enhance with paint.

4 comments:

Vicki W said...

Very, very cool! I have some soy wax and am looking forward to trying it sometime.

Elizabeth said...

These are beautiful!! I am very anxious to try this but I don't have any of the supplies. Any suggestions as to where to get them??
Love what you did!!
Hugs!
Elizabeth

Elizabeth in NM said...

I get a lot of my stuff locally, but check out Dharma Trading Company online: http://www.dharmatrading.com/
They carry EVERYTHING! So much fun, you can spend forever browsing around. And they even give tips and tricks for the different techniques.

Debbie McNeill said...

oooh, I feel left out! I was really interested in the soy wax technique in QA. Looks great!