Pinked to Gray

Fireberry tea - great to drink, dye wooden spoons...

but not so much paper.

?!?!

Well...It's a pretty dove gray, a nice neutral background.

For starters, don't add the alum to cold water until after you have boiled and added the dye/tea.  It reacted to the stainless steel.

It's a gorgeous pot of pink!

While the paper was still damp, I added drops of purple watercolor above.

And then I tried sprinkling some tea to the damp paper - I liked that effect!

The dyed paper started out as a beautiful shade of pink and then turned into gray before my eyes as it dried --  albeit a pretty shades of gray which made a great backdrop to purple and pink painted and leaf stamped back in. . .

(Click to see an earlier art post here from this adventure)