Hey, how are you doing? Thanks for stopping by again. 

I have to apologise, I haven’t posted in a few weeks as I travelled to Africa. I was intending to publish this post before I left but wasn’t able to fit everything in before flying out. I’m back now after a wonderful trip. It’s so amazing how each country has it’s own personality, in terms of culture, climate, landscape and more. I was really moved by my visit to Ghana, and hope to travel there again in the coming year.

So, this week we have Dyeing Light Shades. Dyeing these Light Shades has been a painful process. I have been doing so for several weeks now, let’s say it took longer than expected.

I saw a post on Pinterest about dying wood with Tea bags, so I decided to try it out with a few extra ingredients. As you know, Wood already has a natural beige tone to it. My experience was unlike school days when you stain paper with tea bags, a few dabs here and there; job done. No…it took around 6+ coats to bring this to the desired shade. 

What ingredients did I use? Well, these changed throughout the course of dyeing. I made the 3 batches of dye with 2 teabags, hot water, soy sauce, and malt vinegar. By the fourth batch, I varied it slightly by adding red, yellow and brown watercolour paint to the mixture to get a stronger solid colour. This is not to say that the dye wasn’t brown, it was a rich colour, but the water was still rather translucent. When I added paint it thickened the mixture. I wasn’t looking for a dark brown colour but a nice Tawny shade of Brown. Here is the end product, with a more tanned look.

On another note, I had a workman come and assess my kitchen to change the lighting. I’m not going to be able to have the two pendant lights as you saw in my Pins, due to access issue of checking the wiring from the floor above. This is my fault as I put down flooring in my bedroom so we can’t lift the floorboards to alter the wiring. I’ve been advised to do some research in terms of different types of lighting, that will still incorporate the kitchen lights in a different form. 

I’ll be putting a combination of these idea’s together with wood, spotlights, and pendant lights when I draw out my design. The images can be viewed better at my Pinterest. 

If you’ve tried dying wood or anything else with household items let me know how it went. I’ll see you next time with ‘Fresh Coated Mid Century Stools.’

Nik-Cre – ‘Making life-less rooms into living rooms.’