Week 14
Making more colors
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Trail of Evidence
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This week I started to make more colors. I started with the green that i made from grass. This turned out really nice.
I was inpatient to wait for the flowers to dry so I went and cooked some purlpe syringa vulgaris andenken flowers and boiled them in water. I used 300ml water and 5,5gram flowers. Instead of purple, the water turned yellow, I let it stand for a day but it stayed yellow. Even tho it didn't turn out the way I expected it still looked pretty cool.
Britt told me that when you put red cabbage in water that you wil get a blue color. So i bought red cabbage in a jar together with beetroot in a jar. I used 300ml water and 355gram red cabbage. But because I bought it in a jar instead of fresh, the water turned purple. This also looked really cool, but later I therefore bought fresh red cabbage to try get the blue color.
I also put the beetroot in the water and that made the water turn a beautiful deep red. I used 300ml water and 355gram beetroot. It turned out really cool. Later I thought about mixing the red or purple with more water to make pink.
I went to a health store to look for some natural ingredients and found "Biologische spirulina poeder". This had a green/ blueish color and I also found this online and I wanted to try it so I bought it. I put 300ml water and 2,6gram of spirulina in it. The water turned green and this is what I used to make the green.
I later put fresh red cabbage in water. In the beginning it turned blue but I let it sit for a night (16 hours) and the water then also turned purple. I used 400ml water and 147,3gram red cabbage. This means you can make different colors with it. Later I let it sit for 10 minutes and the water had a beautiful blue color, but when I added the gelatine the water turned purple again (just a bit lighter). I also tried putting the blue in the mould and then adding the mixture to it, but it still turned purple.
Later I tried adding baking soda to the mixure but that made it green. I had 179,7gram red cabbage, 400ml water and 1 teaspoon baking soda.
I also tried to make pink. For this I had 94,1gram beetroot, 147,8gram water, 5 tablespoons of vinegar and half a lemon. But this turned out red. For the second try I used 2 to 3 tablespoons beetroot water, 230ml water and 2 tablespoons vinegar. This turned out to be orange.
Drying the flowers took a bit long so I tried different things to dry them. I spread the flowers on a baking tray and put them in the oven at 38 degrees for 3 hours. This took me too long and then I put them in the sun. I had also put some tulip petals in a container and left them in the sun. I noticed that laying in the sun works best and that the top leaves dry quickly, but the leaves underneath do not.
The recipe that I use
Bio Resin
48gr Gelatine
8gr Glycerine
240ml colored water
How to
1. Warm up the water in a pot on your stove, about 60C. (The water is already dyed because we are planning to use only one color).
2. Add your plasticizer, the glycerine will bond with the gelatin, the polymer. Then wisk around for about 30 seconds.
3. Add the gelatine, your polymer. Then wisk till everything is completely absorbed and they form a smooth mix, this can take up 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Simmer for 10 minutes (86C max).
5. Prepare you’re the surfaces and moulds to be filled.
6. Then start wisking again and make sure the top layer is completely absorbed again, this can take up a few minutes.
7. Take the pot off the fire and keep on wisking for another 10 minutes until your mixture has thickened, almost like a syrup.
8. Once your mixture has thickened, pour it in your chosen mould. Once you start pouring try to cast slowly without inglobating air, and by carefully pouring on the liquid itself.
9. Let the mold dry in a ventilated and dry room, turning your piece until it’s dry will help you preventing mould formation, but might affect deformation due to water loss.
Adjustment
There is mold growing on my bio resin bioplastic. Setting the bioplastic next to an open widnow does not help so now I've covered them in ratio foil. I hope this helps but I also started to change the recipe a bit again. I'm going to add a bit of foam to my recipes, but without mixing it to foam. This way I hope that my bioplastic will look the same but will not mold. In the next week I will see if this works.
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