I got my first experience as a restorer when I was ten years old. In summer. At the dacha. We had a lot of beds - nine acres. The poor strawberries and dill were begging for watering and weeding. To keep me from fussing around under my feet, they set me up with a decrepit wicker chair, gave me boring beige paint with a brush, and left.
The chair had to be thrown away. Not because it was groaning and threatening to fall apart. After my labors, it resembled a giant collapsed dumpling. The weaving was not visible - all the empty holes were clogged with paint. It was a shame to keep something like this even behind the house. They told me “thank you,” and a few days later I saw our chair in the country trash heap.
Do you think old wicker furniture can only be ruined in childhood? But no! It is enough to take up the brush for the first time. How to renew furniture so that it does not resemble a star after unsuccessful plastic surgery? Follow these simple tips and you will succeed!
Step one: selecting weapons
A can of paint and a half-dead paint brush is a lot for a schoolchild who wants to have something to do, but not enough for a novice restorer. So, what do you need to paint wicker furniture? Head to the closet and take out:
Warm water and vinegar solution
- sponge
- sandpaper
- sodium orthophosphate (if necessary)
- primer (similar in color to the selected paint)
- spray paint (aerosol)
- small paint brush
- clean cloth
Step two: clean
Cleaning is tedious, difficult and uninteresting. But it is necessary. Especially if the wicker tables and chairs are so shabby and dirty that they resemble the ghosts of the Middle Ages. This is where you will need a solution of warm water and vinegar. We will use it to clean stains and remove mold from the surface of furniture.
Step three: three
Getting rid of old stains and nasty mold is only half the battle. Furniture needs to be prepared for painting. Sandpaper will come in handy at this stage. We will use it to rub and sand the surface until it becomes smooth.
Step four: clean out complex stains
Sometimes mold and dirt don't give up. They bite into vines or rattan with the tenacity of sea clings. A vinegar solution won't help here. And sodium phosphate - for sure! This caustic white salt expels “eternal” stains and mold in a minute. Sodium orthophosphate can be purchased at any hardware or paint store.
Step five: prime
Priming is a simple process that everyone tends to skip. It is hopelessly boring, like descriptions of nature in novels. But everything boring is very important. Therefore, it will have to be primed. The primer will help the fresh paint stick to the surface and give the finished job a professional look. To allow the treated furniture to dry, leave it for a day.
Step six: paint
Yes, yes, if you take painting seriously, the spray (and not some drying oil!) will be fifth in line - after vinegar, sandpaper, phosphate and primer. Place the furniture on a clean cloth and keep the paint can at some distance from the surface to be painted. Apply the composition evenly, change the direction of movement and do not stop so that the stream of paint does not concentrate at one point.
Aerosol paint is less thick than traditional paint, so do not spray it in a thick layer - otherwise drops will form on the surface, which will flow down and ruin the whole job. It is better to paint hard-to-reach areas with a thin paint brush.
Step seven: dry
The seventh step is passive, but necessary. Take the painted furniture to a well-ventilated area and leave it alone for a day to dry. If paint gaps become noticeable after drying, repeat step 6.
Painting wicker furniture is easy. But – to be honest – it doesn’t look much like entertainment. It’s not enough to drag a table or bench out into the yard and wave paint spray around. You will have to follow the instructions and sequence of actions. However, if strict instructions are not to your liking, do it easier - throw a blanket or colored pillow on the decrepit willow chair. A couple of summer seasons are guaranteed for him.
At this point our the cart is already ready and has approximately the same appearance as shown in the illustration. During weaving and processing of the vine, micro-irregularities, roughness, burrs, and micro-chips inevitably remain on it. Our task at this stage is eliminate all these surface imperfections. To do this, we first need to go over the entire surface of the basket with fine sandpaper, and then with a woolen cloth. When polishing, special attention should be paid to the handle, as well as the hoop and areas of the basket with cleaned vines. The surface should be pleasant to the touch.
Staining
Surely you have seen baskets with shade, darker than natural or even painted in other colors. This is achieved by staining - treating wood with stain. Personally, I think that to achieve a spectacular look for a basket, it is enough to coat the basket with varnish. But if you need something more, you can treat the basket with stain. It's up to you to decide whether to starve your cart or not.
Stains of different colors are sold in specialized construction and hardware stores. The composition is applied to the basket with a regular brush in several stages, achieving uniform coloring.
Varnish coating
Basket varnishing gives the product a shiny, truly elegant look. In addition to the spectacular shine, the varnish protects the basket from moisture and mechanical damage.
Almost any construction varnish is suitable for processing the basket. However, preference should be given to natural varnishes. For interior or exterior work - it is not so important.
To use varnish you need to pour it into some container (jar, cut off bottom of a bottle). The basket is processed with a medium-width brush. Then, hard-to-reach areas should be polished with a thinner brush.
It is important to note that only the handle, hoop, outer sides and bottom of the basket are varnished. Internal surfaces are not varnished! This is necessary so that the vine continues to dry unhindered. The drying process will gradually continue over 2-3 months until the basket reaches its minimum weight and maximum strength. The basket is usually dried at room temperature in a dry room. You should not try to speed up the drying of the vine using heaters - the varnish may crack and the vine may become deformed. Natural drying is what you need. Moreover, you can use the basket as soon as the varnish dries (2-3 days). It will just be a little heavy at first. But the moisture will go away and the basket will acquire its optimal weight.
Sometimes they sell baskets painted with aniline dyes in green, red, purple and other flashy colors. This is very bad. In addition, aniline dyes fade quickly in the sun. The product takes on a faded appearance.
Nothing can compare to the natural golden color of the rod. It may be lighter or thicker to light brown. This depends on the time of preparation of the rod, on the duration of its steaming and on the type of willow. After all, there are hundreds of its varieties in the world. Each differs not only in the flexibility of the wood, but also in the supply of tannins that affect the natural color. We do not accept aniline and some other dyes, for the use of which it is necessary to build closed boxes to burn sulfur in them. The book, we remind you, is addressed to beginning basket makers - teenagers and pensioners. They are not suitable for toxic bleaches such as sulfuric acid vapors and any peroxides.
But we are not against coloring at all. After all, you can get a color that pleases the eye without “factory” mordants, without “big chemicals”. You can bleach rods or finished products in ash lye, hot soapy water or a weak solution of bleach. We encounter this chemistry quite often in everyday life. We are used to it. There is no problem getting it. What's the point if we write about all sorts of domestic and overseas drugs that give a decent color. Where can I get them? You'll knock off your heels while you're looking for some logwood extract or pyrogallic acid. And all this is expensive. You need a pinch, but you have to take a jar. As they say, the game is not worth the candle.
Of course, the white basket looks good. But, really, we don’t know what’s worse than the soiled white color, the color of a basket, as it were, “tanned” in the sun? This is exactly the color they turn out when they are woven from well-steamed rods. A matter of taste. Turgenev's heroines adored white marble shoulders, and our contemporaries like a southern tan.
However, we called this chapter “Dyeing from wicker and bast,” but we say that this is bad, expensive and harmful to health. But there are dyes prepared by nature itself, for example, onion peels, young birch leaves, black alder bark, heather, wild rosemary, buckthorn shoots and leaves, and wolf berries. Look how many there are! And the colors are given: yellow, brown, green - different shades, depending on the amount of dye and the time of exposure in the decoction. There are no screaming tones, however. Well, God bless them, let's paint them non-flashy. But let's bleach it first.
Bleaching. Lye can be made from wood ash. Take a liter jar of sifted ash in a bucket of water and set it to heat. Submerge your basket before boiling. After 30 minutes, remove the product from the boiling lye, rinse with clean water, and set to dry. Immerse the second and third product in the same lye, boil it in the same way, and rinse.
If you still have a waiting list for bleaching, change the lye that is losing its bleaching power.
They can also be bleached in soapy water. This is the same as washing heavily worn clothes without much effort by boiling them in a soapy solution. Your mothers and grandmothers have a lot of experience in this matter. They will tell you how to do this and find the right vessel for this task. Try
do so that your hobby does not cause grief to your loved ones, so that you don’t have to hear: “He’s littered again. Look what a stable he’s created here!”
A good result is obtained by soaking rods or finished products in a weak solution of bleach. As you understand, both finished products and twigs, of course, cleared of bark, can be bleached and then painted. Below we will tell you how to use painted rods more effectively.
Bleaching is not only a preparation for dyeing, but is of independent importance if you want your basket to be swan-white. The laundry basket should be bleached.
So, let's tell you how to use natural dyes.
General rules. All bark, leaves, crushed shoots, and wolfberries are placed in a linen bag or two-layer gauze and immersed in water. This is so that the coloring turns out uniform, without gluing pieces of color in certain places. Water for preparing a decoction of dyes is taken from rain or spring water. If you don't have it, you can use tap water, but make sure there is no rust or any residue.
Yellow. It can be obtained by boiling the product in one of the decoctions: onion peels, wild rosemary, young birch leaves.
It's very easy to stock up on onion peels. You need to put a plastic bag under your mother’s (or grandmother’s) arm and ask her to put the onion skins remaining during storage or during cleaning into it. During Lent, grandmother stocks up on this goodness even without your request. She will need onion peels to dye Easter eggs. Ask her to collect it for your share. Grandma will teach you how to paint the rods or a finished basket.
Just in case no one in the house knows how to paint with onion skins, let’s reveal this “secret”. Onion peels, like other natural dyes, are placed in a gauze bag and immersed, we repeat, in rain or spring water. The water is heated. Before boiling, immerse the products or rods and boil for another 25-30 minutes. Remove and dry. If there was not enough husk, the color will turn out to be pale yellow.
With more dye, the color will be thicker and have a brownish tint.
The second yellow color can be obtained from young birch leaves. This dye is also readily available, but it ties you up in time. You cannot miss the moment when the birch has not yet fully formed its leaves; you need to collect them when they are still so tender, the yellowness in their color is noticeable even to the naked eye. Old leaves will not produce this color. And the young ones produce a very delicate yellow color with a slightly greenish tint.
They work with birch leaves in the same way as with onion peels. That is, prepare a decoction: boil the leaves in a bag, immerse the product and boil for another 25-30 minutes.
The green color is given by the floater. Here they do the same as with onion peels or birch leaves. But with wolfberries, which also give a good green color, they act differently. You have been familiar with this shrub since early childhood. How many times have your elders told you when you were picking bright, so accessible berries: “Don’t eat, don’t eat! Spit! This berry is not good. It’s called wolfberry.” You asked: “Why wolf? Do wolves love her, or what?”
But every plant is good for something. And although you can’t eat this berry, you can use it to make green paint and paint a basket or cleaned twigs. (A decoction of the stems and leaves of this shrub is used to paint it not green, but brown. More on this below).
Wolf berries are well kneaded and boiled in vinegar. The broth is filtered through three layers of gauze or through linen. The marc is thrown in, and more vinegar and a little alum are added to the liquid and boiled. In this way green paint is obtained. After cooling, you can paint with a brush or boil water in a barrel, add paint there and immerse the product or rods and boil for at least 30 minutes.
Be careful that any of the kids do not eat bright berries or eat puree from these berries.
Brown. It can be obtained by boiling products or twigs in a decoction of black alder bark or buckthorn shoots and leaves. A decoction of shoots and leaves of wolfberries gives a rather pleasant color. (The berries themselves give a green color, and a decoction of shoots and leaves turns them brown.)
They act in the same way as with onion peels and young birch leaves.
In our central regions there are no plants that produce red. If you really want this color, then use the well-known magenta.
We would advise you to paint not finished products, but cleaned rods. By combining different colors and shades, you can weave more beautiful products than those painted in a single color of green, yellow or brown.
Previously, we told you how, by alternating rods of different shades, you can weave checkered and striped baskets. The stripes can be vertical or horizontal, offset at half the height or through.
You can come up with as many options for combining color and shape as you like. At first you will use someone else’s pattern that you like, and then you will come up with it yourself. And your own, even if not quite perfect, is always more pleasant.
You probably noticed that we do not clutter the book with showing many product samples. We give only what is discussed in the text, which is discussed in detail in an expanded form. It’s easier to pull out all sorts of beautiful pictures from catalogs of basket products than to show how ordinary onion and beamless baskets are woven.
You can sit a handsome grandfather on a wicker chair, placing all sorts of wicker things around him. This increases the cost of the book and gives nothing to the novice basket maker; it makes him envious and annoyed that such sterile white and smooth rods are not available to him. And the master, having taken a good look at such pictures, will discover that the rods from which the chair is made are not willow or bamboo at all, but plastic, and they are tied not with willow, but with plastic tape. This is a willow imitation. Plastic allows the use of a completely different technology than willow requires.
The variety that dyeing rods can provide, of course, would not be a bad thing to show in pictures, but with one-color printing it is difficult to convey this.
We have already shown what is possible in the chapters “Baskets” and “Vases and Vases”.
We are finishing our story about products made from willow twig. In the next chapter, “Remember the Old Time,” we will talk about weaving bast shoes and shoe covers from linden bast. And here, saying goodbye to the vine, I would like to wish our readers success in mastering the craft of a basket maker. It has not died among the people, although it has been forgotten for the last half century. Now this half-forgotten craft has all the conditions to be revived again. In different countries, especially in England, wicker weaving is on a grand scale.
Sometimes on television, on the pages of newspapers and magazines they show strange things woven from wicker. Someone wove a monkey in the year of the monkey, another wove a rooster and, just for fun, wove a chicken. It is clear that this was in the year of the rooster. Such things speak of the capabilities of a willow twig that has fallen into the skillful hands of a person obsessed with artistic imagination. There is a place for such items in a museum. Let people admire them.
Perhaps some of you, readers of this book, will not limit yourself to weaving things needed in household use, but will weave “your own sun”. We pushed you towards this to the best of our ability, trying to avoid a dry presentation of the material. How successful this was is for you to judge.
The demand for handmade souvenirs is constantly growing. Many choose various techniques for making such things as their hobby, a creative activity for the soul, and for some it also becomes a source of income. If you are interested in the method of making products from paper wicker, but you do not know how and what to paint newspaper tubes for weaving, read the tips and tricks. You will definitely find a method and composition that suits you.
When to paint
If you decide to start making products from paper wicker, then you need to learn not only weaving techniques, but also how and with what to paint newspaper tubes for weaving. If you are using colored newspaper or magazine sheets to roll the blanks, you can leave them undyed. After all, a wicker product will have an interesting surface even without this.
If ordinary black and white newspapers are used, the tubes are often painted to match the color of the natural vine (unsanded), that is, brown or light (as if the bark had been removed from the branches).
There are several coloring options:
- Before weaving.
- After.
- Combined method (applying the main color before and drawing the pattern on the finished product).
Choose the method that is convenient for you and suitable for each specific product.
What is the best way to paint newspaper tubes for weaving?
In fact, there are a huge number of options. Almost any composition that has a color pigment is suitable, but the choice is determined by what shade you want to get and how rich it is. Some compositions make the tubes hard after the paint layer has dried, others make them soft, but have lost their brightness and become faded. Dyes can be used both water- and alcohol-based, as well as powder ones, which are pre-diluted in liquid. So, the list of options is:
- gouache;
- watercolor (fading);
- acrylic paints;
- stain;
- car spray paint;
- iodine solution;
- brilliant green;
- for clothes;
- mascara;
- ink;
- hair dye.
If the workpieces themselves are supposed to be painted before weaving, a stain is usually used, which interacts well with the paper and, after drying, gives a beautiful brown tint. To increase saturation, you can apply the dye in several layers with preliminary drying of the previous layer.
If you decide to first weave the product and then process it, use acrylic colors or gouache. They are sold in sets, so they are suitable for making a complex pattern on a surface or a vase. You can draw an ornament, floral motifs or any other pattern.
It is worth considering that when using any of the proposed options, the newspaper tubes must be varnished to make the product more dense and resistant to moisture. It is better to process a finished basket, since the varnish layer will make the paper hard and not very convenient for weaving.
What not to paint
You can choose what to paint newspaper tubes from the list above, but it is worth especially noting that watercolor loses its brightness very much after drying. Dyes made from onion peels, which are used to color Easter eggs, are definitely not suitable. If you are a fan of natural materials, do not use chemicals such as hair dye.
How to paint newspaper tubes for weaving white
If you love exclusive things and want to make a wicker product in order to apply a pattern on it later, for example, floral motifs, it is better to immediately prepare tubes from thin white paper, office or even cash register tape.
Most likely, you have already decided how and with what to paint newspaper tubes for weaving in different shades. The same paints that have a white color in the palette can be used to produce white blanks. Acrylic paint or primer, water-based emulsion and even gouache are suitable, if you take it in a sufficiently thick, creamy consistency.
Dyeing accessories
When you have decided what composition you will coat the workpieces with, the question may arise as to what to paint the newspaper tubes for weaving with, that is, with what tool. You can use the following options:
- wide brush;
- sponge (sponge);
- a high container into which the pigment solution is poured.
Choose the option that is most convenient for you.
Dyeing technology
When using the first and second tools, the work happens like this:
- Prepare the composition in any container.
- Place the tubes in one layer on oilcloth.
- Put on gloves and pick up a brush.
- Dip into the composition and apply to the tubes.
- Let one side dry.
- Turn it over.
- Repeat the process on all sides.
You can paint and dry the tubes immediately in a vertical position if you secure them in a solid base (for example, with clothespins along the edges of a jar or glass).
If the coloring will be done by dipping into the coloring composition, it is better to make a special container from a bottle, or even better, from a plastic pipe of a suitable length, attaching the bottom hermetically. Pour the composition into such a container and lower the tubes. Do not forget to add the solution, as it will be consumed and the level will drop (unpainted areas may remain).
So, you have learned how to paint newspaper tubes for weaving. Choose your favorite composition and coloring method. Create spectacular souvenirs with your own hands.
Dyeing the vine used to enhance the natural color of wood, even it out in case of uneven coloring, and give a new color to the surface, for which dyes, pigments and mordants are used. Coloring can not only change the appearance of a product, but also protect it from the harmful effects of precipitation, sunlight, and also, to some extent, prevent aging.
Dyes are soluble organic dyes of natural origin or synthetic. Dyes must be lightfast, have a bright color, high ability to penetrate deeply into wood (dispersity), not veil the wood texture and be easily soluble in water, alcohol, acetone and other organic solvents.Wood, including willow weaving rods, can be dyed in any color and give ordinary willow twigs or willow ribbons the color of a more valuable type of wood. In addition to painting in any color and imitation, there is gilding, silvering, bronzed and other types of finishing. However, not all trees respond to dyeing equally. Thus, soft and loose rocks are more difficult to paint than hard rocks. The color can be light and faint, dark and thick.
Each tree has its own natural color, and pre-prepared rods or ribbons darken, acquiring different shades over time, which even depend on where the material is stored. The purity and evenness of the color depends very much on preliminary preparation of rods and their cleaning. Therefore, before you begin painting, it is necessary to carefully process and sand the weaves or ribbons prepared for weaving with fine-grained emery cloth.
As natural dyes decoctions of leaves, flowers and fruits of plants have long been used, for example, a decoction of walnut peels - walnut stain; decoctions of coffee, tea, saffron flowers, etc.
Synthetic dyes are complex organic substances that are obtained from coal tar. They are divided into direct, basic, nitric, acid, etc. In furniture production, acid dyes are mainly used. They paint wood in bright, pure tones and have satisfactory light fastness. Acid dyes dissolve well in water and can be mixed with each other. The chemical industry produces ready-made mixed dyes for wood under numbers, the most widely used of which are: reddish-brown No. 3 and 4 - for coloring to match mahogany, light brown - No. 5, 6, 7, 16, 17 - for coloring in light walnut tone, dark brown No. 8, 9, 15 - for coloring to match dark walnut.
Water-soluble dyes used in the form of solutions of 1 – 4% concentration. To soften water hardness, add 0.1% soda ash. To dissolve the dye, water is heated to a temperature of 80 - 95 degrees Celsius. After the dye has completely dissolved, the solution is cooled to 30 - 40 degrees and filtered through four layers of gauze. To obtain an even and deep coloring of wood, it is recommended to add 2–4% ammonia to the solution.
From alcohol-soluble dye They use red light-resistant No. 32, red-brown No. 33 and walnut-brown light-fast No. 34. They are intended for dyeing wood and tinting furniture varnishes. They are used in the form of 0.1 – 0.5% solutions in ethyl alcohol.
Among other dyes used for coloring wood: nigrosin– black dye. Alcohol-soluble nigrosin is lightfast and is used for coloring polishes and varnishes. Water-soluble nigrosin has low light fastness and is used for dyeing wood.
Mordants- these are some inorganic salts and bases that react chemically with tannins contained in wood, resulting in the formation of colored compounds. Rocks that do not contain tannins can also be stained with mordants if they are pre-treated with substances such as oak tanning extract, pyrocatechin, pyrogallol. Potassium salts - chromate and permanganate - are used as mordants; iron salts - chlorine and sulfate; aluminum-potassium alum; ammonia, etc. Chromium, manganese and copper salts, as well as ammonia, give brown and yellow-brown colors on wood, while iron salts give bluish-gray and black colors.
Mordants are used in the form of 0.5 - 5% aqueous solutions. The coloring is durable, water- and light-resistant, the wood texture is not veiled, but appears. The disadvantage of mordants as coloring agents is the limited number of color tones obtained, as well as the dependence of the color tone on fluctuations in the chemical composition of the wood (tannin content), so the results obtained on one product may not be reproducible on another. Mordants are used only in individual production, when restoring furniture, etc.
Wood coloring can be superficial or deep, carried out using the deep impregnation method. Deep impregnation method often used to change the color of wood.
When finishing parts or assembled products, use surface staining, in which the dye penetrates shallowly into the wood - to a depth of 0.1 - 0.2 mm.