Rust Dyeing on Paper

Once again, trying a new technique (for me) came about because of my mum. (You can see a previous example of this here, from back in March when I tried out snow dyeing with her.) This time she was wanting to rust dye fabric, so I decided I would try rust dyeing paper and see how it all worked. As you will see from the photos towards the end of this post, it was definitely a success and something I’d love to try again in the future.

I used a variety of paper types and weights, such as watercolour paper, cartridge paper, khadi papers and my own recycled paper. I found that the two handmade papers worked so much better, which might have something to do with their absorbency. I used several different types of rusty objects, including nails, tins and metal fixings. I did notice that some items transferred the rust better than others. I’m not sure if this has something to do with the amount or type of rust, but it produced very variable results depending on the item used.

To get the rust to transfer, I soaked the paper in a mix of malt vinegar and water (although tea also works and might be better for dyeing paper), and sandwiched my rusted items in between a few of sheets. I had to make sure the paper was properly soaked in the vinegar-water mix, but without leaving it standing in it, because the rust needs air to oxidise. I also needed to put a heavy object on top of the paper, to make sure it remained in contact with the rust to get a good transfer.

I started off by leaving it for an hour, but as you’ll see in the photos below, that wasn’t really long enough, so I left the rest of the paper for about 24 hours and got much better results.

I love how some of these turned out and I will be framing them when I decide which ones to keep. The rest I will probably end up using in a mixed media collage (I’m thinking of something along these lines). I will keep you posted on what I make with these, either here or on Instagram.