What Goes on Behind the Scenes

Some days as an artist are devoted mostly to really mundane tasks. Today was one of those days where I chose to clump the necessary tasks into most of a day. Placing sets of earrings on their cards. Determining prices. Deciding on appropriate titles. Tracking down a list of all materials used to make a piece. Making inventory lists for consignment pieces. Designing and printing little table tent cards to be placed next to display pieces. Running out for depleted supplies. Deciding which pieces work best together as a set (when each was designed individually). Quality control under sunlight to make sure that any unintentional blemishes are repaired.

Of course, days like these require several diversions, and experiments are always fun. So does a salt resist technique work with alcohol inks on wood? Yes, but the results are quite different than I expected. The wicking properties of the wood proved to first accept normal gravitational properties (flowing downward), and then took on antigravity flow in the upward direction. This led me to reminisce back to days of developing TLC (thin layer chromatography) plates in the lab. Ah, yes, dye migration and solvent evaporation can be useful in an artist's studio. Plus at the end of the process, the color of the salt had changed to that of a pale green. Hmmm, caramel and terra cotta make green?

How well do these alcohol inks work on the surface of an emptied egg? They're designed for non-porous surfaces, so they should work pretty well right? They've also worked well on some porous surfaces (paper, tumbled marble, wood), so the partially porous eggshell should be a good choice. It's been ages since I poked holes in both ends of an egg and blew the contents out, but that part of the feat was a success, as was the washing process. The application of dye wasn't as successful. Maybe I need to add more water or some vinegar to it? The chemist in me has to check whether calcium carbonate is soluble in alcohol (it's not). Yet I'm still surprised that the dye doesn't seem to successfully stick to the surface, especially since it will to shiny metals and plastics. I guess there's a little more experimentation to be done--but I've got to save some fun for tomorrow...