The idea for this week was to make a pouch out of combined techniques. I find this one of the most difficult weeks, since there are so many aspects to it, that it is definitely impossible to try them all. So the ones that I found most interesting, are growing crystals and leather moulding, which is why I wanted to combine both. One side of the pouch would have grown crystals, the other moulded coins.

Growing Cristals

I started off with quite a big pan of Alun and Chinese ink. Out of the small tests we did as a group I figured that the Alun crystals grow quickest and the Chinese ink gives a really nice colour (greyish black). The downside of the ink, is that it is absolutely not visible whether all crystals dissolved properly, so I didn't know whether I had put in enough or not. After about a month of letting it be, thinking it completely didn't work since I didn't see any crystals growing on the surface which had happend in the tests we made, I thought it was time to clean it out. The first thing I did was taking out the fabric, though whilst trying to pull it out, I noticed that it got stuck. Which meant that it had worked after all!

Unfortunately, as you can see the crystals didn't stick to the fabric, nor to the 3D printed earring from last week. Though I had already been told by Cecilia, that the 3D print probably wouldn't work, the crystals have nothing 'to grow on' as the surface area is to smooth.

The crystals that had grown on the bottom of the pan turned out really beautiful!

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Bioplastic on Textile

Since I guessed that the crystals wouldn't turn out as I wanted them to, I decided to try something else for that side of the pouch.

During the presentation I saw the wood-textile, which is basically stiffening the fabric where ever a piece of wood is glued, changing the movement as the fabric as a whole. I thought this looked really cool! However, I wanted to do something else as the wood used in the example. So instead I tried the recipe that worked best in the bioplastic week (Monster Red + Glycerine + Agar Agar) to use as 'patches' instead of the wood.

And now, whilst posting the picture I know what went wrong, maybe