What a Colourful Day!

Last year my friend Janice, sent me some Cushing Prefection Dyes to try. Janice plays with lots of colour dyes to make her bear's colour unique, and they are very popular. I have always wanted to try this out and finally yesterday night, I took some courage and thrown in a few pieces of mohair to experiment and play with.

Have you ever felt bored making the same bears with the same coloured fabric because you ordered a large quantity of it? Then you should really consider to dye them! I wanted to make a few new dragons for Melbourne show but is running out of ideas and thought that it would be wonderful to have a few colourful dragons for the show.

Cushing's Prefection Dyes

Washing mohair before hand dye, this yellow mohair is going into the blue dye

As following to the instructions, I washed the mohair with water and detergent. Next, I prepared a pot of boiling water (pot generously contributed by my mum), and I add in a small amount of colour dye (powder form) with a few tea spoons of vinegar. I am not really sure what is the purpose of adding vinegar but I think the more you add, the better for the dye to be absorbed by the mohair.

Dark Blue Dye

After dye, the colour lightens

Next dyeing pink and white mohair. Going into yellow dye

Add some dye into the boiling water

Add vinegar and boils the water. When it's boiling you can start putting in the mohair

When the water is boiling, slowly put in pieces of your mohair. Let it soak for approximately 15 mins, as it absorbs the dye, slowly use a pair of long wooden chopsticks to flip and turn the fabric making sure all surface area are soaked in the dye.

Last piece of white going into green dye

Make sure it's fully emerged into the dye

Findings....
1) Initially the pot of dye is dark coloured, after the mohair absorbs the dye, the pot of dye will become lighter and clear.
2) Some of the mohair backing doesn't absorb and dye as well as the fur. The fur are fully dyed but not the backing, hence if you are considering dyeing coloured mohair (Pink, yellow, blue etc) into other colours, be prepared that you might get fur dyed and the backing remains the original colour. However, I find this result interesting as well, you can experiment to get the fur and backing with different colour combination. This makes your bears unique! =)
3) The first piece of yellow when dyed to blue, it becomes greenish blue (Cyan) in colour instead of blue. Lesson learnt is that alway keep in mind of the colour wheel, yellow plus blue gives you cyan that makes sense!
4) Wash the mohair once you completed the dyeing process with water to remove the vinegar smell.

Air dry the mohair and almost ready to use!

I am really happy with the results and I can't wait to make something soon. It's very easy and fun as well, I would definitely try this again soon =)

Tata! Really nice colours! I am so excited to make something new with them =)

Tutorial - Beading a Little Chicky

Here's a tutorial I am going to share on how to bead a little chicky.
Christmas is round the corner, I thought you might like to do some hands-on craft for your love ones. For your information, the hen on the left is available on the market for years, because it's not my design so I am not teaching that today but I have redesigned another chicky so that you can learn in this tutorial.

You will be learning on how to make the chicky on the right which is designed by me.

Here's is a portion of my beading supplies

You will need round black beads x 2 pcs (4mm) for the eyes 

 

Nylon Fishing Line 0.22mm (You need to cut about 950mm long)



Swaroskvi Crystals or Plastic beads (3mm White - 24pcs, 4mm Yellow x 19 pcs, 3mm Brown x 9pcs, 3mm red x 1pc)



First, instead 5 of the white into the line then thread across the last bead to form a polygon



Next, thread across the last white crystal


  

Cross thread the black

Pass through the thread on black eyes side into the nearby white bead and the other ends insert in 3 whites



Then cross threading on the last white bead



The head is almost done, you can see the 2 eyes on the face

 

This time, you have one end thread to the nearby white crystal then the one end with 2 small white and 1 big yellow crystal



The cross threading will be on the white crystal

 

Thread into the nearby white crystal then insert a red crystal  then thread into the next white crystal. The thread passes though 3 crystals hortizonally.



The other end insert 1 yellow and 1 white then you cross thread on the last white crystal



Remember to instead in a round 6mm bead




Add 4 yellows

  

Repeat the same around



Pass throught the cross end into the nearby yellow crystal and on the other end insert 3 crystals



Do the same throughout

Pull tight!





This is how the base looks like, pass the thread around the base which consists of 5 yellows, tight knots 2 times



Weave the excess thread to the back of the chicky where you can find a polyon hole, thread the 2 ends across a yellow bead

Add 3mm Brown Crystals 3 pieces on the thread then weave around the body and tie knots to secure the structure



You can add wings consisting of 3 brown crystals on both sides, then insert a metal piece into the bead instead the head



Cut the metal piece shorter and use a round nose plier to form a loop



Add a metal ring and a handphone strap, this is the finished product! 



*Remember in this design, every interlink consist of 5 crystals. When you have excess thread, weave them around and tight knots, this will make the figurine tighter and rigid.

I hope you enjoy my tutorial today, HAPPY BEADING! =)

Hugs,

Wayne

My website is now able to link to my blog! Wayneston 1st tutorial =)

My friend Joanne, told me that she has linked her website to her blog. I think it's a great idea to do that. Most of the time I think that my blog has more viewers than my website, now that I can do this it would be great. I love to blog and enjoys customising buttons on my side bars, I would also say that I am more active with my blog than my website. The website is updated weekly when there is a new bear available for adoption.

My website =)

You can now click on the "website" tab above, to visit my website and vice versa.
It's simple to do it,  you can try it too. I hope this will benefit those that has a website too =)

Creating pages for your tabs. There is also a Favicon there, you may add your logo if you want =)


 

Click on edit pages



Click on "New Page" then insert your page information. You can have as many pages you want.
Click View to get your website URL, to be inserted into your "Link List"



Go to your dashboard then click on the design tab



Select add a gadget (top or bottom of the page)

Select "Link List"

Insert the number of tabs you want. *New Site URL, please see above! 

Place your "Link List" below your header

That's it! Isn't that simple? I hope this tutorial is helpful, do share with us your blog if you have done this too, we would love to see =)

Have a great day! Hugs, Wayne