Russian Craft day: Batik. First, draw a design on regular paper and then go over it with heavy black ink. Lay underneath fabric and then use hot wax to draw design on fabric.(we used paraffin wax from the grocery store.)
After the wax has completely dried, put fabric in the dye. Our dye was made by boiling beets, which I used that day in Borscht, a traditional Russian soup. (The soup was not well liked by the family, but they were sort of good sports about trying something from Russia. I don't think it will be served again, although I liked it just fine.)
The dyeing process is supposed to take about a half hour, we left it in for a couple of hours, then wrung them out and set them outside to dry. Unfortunately the color was not very strong at all. After it dried, we could hardly see the color difference. I don't know if this had to do with the fact that I had cooked the beets the day before, and so our colored water was a day old, or if there weren't enough beets. I guess next time, I would just buy a box of RID color dye to ensure better results.
After the fabric is dried, the wax can be picked off, or ironed off with paper towels, newspaper/brown bag, then iron the fabric and make a wall hanging. Since the dye really didn't take, none of us was inspired to complete the project. I guess it will go into our binders as a keepsake, rather than on our walls.
We did enjoy our week of Russia study though. I was surprised by the amount of violence in the history, from the beginning. We got a pile of Russian fairytale stories from the library, I was surprised how many there were, we definitely enjoyed the Baba Yaga Tales. We also got a history channel movie from the library, Russia Land of the Tsars, Caiden loved it. He watched the entire thing and even watched some of it again the next day. He recently said that History is his favorite subject. That is something to make a homeschool mama feel good about!
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