Creating Batik

The boys and I had a chance to create some "batik" recently.  It's actually an artform that is very popular is Malaysia.  Coincidentally, it's one of the subscription projects that came in the mail for us!

So first, we have to "wax" our pattern onto the piece of cloth.  It was a bit difficult to control the flow of wax coming out of this gadget:

This one is Grahams - very simple:

Charlie on the other hand, got really complicated with his design!

The painting or more like dying process was a bit simpler than drawing with wax.  Basically, the dye will soak in on the areas that are not waxed.  Charlie is super happy with his work!

I'm just glad there were no spill ups:

Ta da! These two boys couldn't be more different:

I decided to draw a peacock - actually the one that I saw at the Getty Villa:

Remember this one?

Not quite exactly the same, but figured I'd mix it up a little bit:

And then I couldn't figure out how to color it.  We were only given 4 dye colors:

And here is mine. Not too shabby :-)

And the final step is to get rid of all that wax.  This was such a messy process.  We had to put the cloth into a bag that's filled with water, and then put that into the microwave for about 3-4 minutes:

Charlie had so much wax in it I had to double "boil" in the microwave!  Look at all that leftover wax in the plastic bag:

And then you had to be careful not to over-boil so to speak because then the dye might run into your entire work.  Yikes!

After the "boiling" process, I had to rinse it out with lukewarm water.  I was so concerned about the access wax getting into the drain.  We obviously don't need to clog up our drain again. So much wax residue everywhere!

Phew! Finally... after a few more washes, it is all done!

We may have kept it out in the sun for too long as the color faded a bit more than what appeared here.  Graham's is super cute.  I kept asking if he would just color it all in, but he was just happy with the blue splatters like that:

And look how complicated Charlie's turned out.  Ha!  That's this kid for you:

My peacock drawing might need some help but I thought the colors turned out ok :-)

What a fun project! Although that wax removal process was a pain in the butt!  We still have a lot of wax and dye left so we'll see what other batik we can make later this summer. We've already done the one camp that I had signed up for, so there's lots of time and summer left!