Can you recommend a good, permanent green dye for bone and/or mother or pearl beads and buttons?

Question

I am looking for something easy and relatively safe. I have used acid dyes for wool and silk, and fiber-reactive dyes for plant fibers. I can find the sizes and shapes I want, but not the color.

Answer 1

I would guess that it is not at all difficult to do. Bone, like eggshell, is of course largely composed of calcium, with some proteins. An easy thing to try would be Easter egg dye. At this season you will find the special Easter egg coloring kits in stores, but the food coloring available in little bottles (often in small boxed sets of four colors) on the baking aisle in the grocery store is the same kind of dye. To dye eggshells, you soak them in water mixed with vinegar and food coloring. Hotter water works better than cooler water; use less water for more intense colors.

Jacquard recommends the use of their Wood & Reed dye on bone. ("All you need is a container large enough to hold your material, hot water, and Jacquard Wood and Reed dye.") I believe that this dye is of the class called Basic dye; it should not be used in your kitchen, should not be used in any food-use container, and should be used with care to avoid any skin exposure to the dye or any breathing of the dye powder. All dyes other than food coloring should be used with similar precautions and care, of course, but I feel that it is particularly important to avoid direct exposure to basic dyes. Bone will be far easier to dye than acrylic, but the page "Dyeing Acrylic with Basic Dye" includes a discussion of this type of dye. (Here is a direct link to purchase Jacquard Wood & Reed Dye at Fiber-arts.com.)

Some very old recipes for the natural dyeing of bone and other materials appear in a historical document called the Allerley Mackel, which has been translated by Drea Leed; it says, "Any wood, bone, or horn you want to dye must lie for half a day in alum water, and then be allowed once more to dry. Then it should be dyed as follows", followed by recipes involving copper verdigris, brazilwood (an expensive natural dye), apple tree bark, or nut galls. For example: "To dye yellow: Take the bark of apple trees, scrape the outer rough skin from it, keep the middle layer and cut it into small pieces. Pour water thereon, lay the wood, bone or horn therein, also put alum therein and let it boil well together." Alum is a commonly used mordant for natural dyes, serving to attach them more permanently to the material being dyed.

All dyed items must be rinsed with cool water until no more dye comes out into the rinse water, or else coated when dry with a clear shellac or polyurethane coating, to prevent dye rub-off. Also note that you will find it very difficult to dye an item on a later occasion to exactly match an item dyed earlier; all matching items should be dyed at the same time, in the same dyebath.

Answer 2

Depends on how light your real hair color is. If its blonde or even a light brown it could be stained. I once had pink streaks in my hair that faded and never went away till I ended up bleaching my hair (so I could dye it blue). But really you can only dye it to get rid of it If you have a light hair color go for a shade lighter than your normal hair color. Bleach it again. You only have to leave the bleach on for like 5 minutes at the most for manic panic to disappear completely. Since it is a semi permanent. And after you bleach it deep condition it. Also don't do this to much or you'll fry your hair. I was lucky to have a chelsa hair cut when I used to dye my hair all those fun colors.

Answer 3

To one pot of water add two teaspoons of vinegar, add one or more of following, boiling 20 minutes. Spinach for green.
Ground turmeric for yellow. Beet or cranberries for red. Red cabbage or blueberries for blue. Spinich gets its deep green hue from lutein. Suggest reader play with phytochemicals of various veggies. Feel free to eat your mistakes.