Experimenting with Nori Paste

On the sunset fabric shown a couple days ago, I experimented with NORI rice paste as a resist with acrylic paints.

In my watercolor on fabric class, I used a thinned out NORI (about equal parts paste and water) to paint lines onto 8 mome habotai silk. The pigments flowed into the resist, but did not flow much further than that. So the yellow in one segment and the red in the next would flow into an orange where the resist was... but not much further than that.

On cotton sheeting, the thinned resist was not successful. The full strength paste needed to be scrubbed fully into the fabric to work well. Where there are holes in the suns below, the paste was not fully scrubbed in.

In Sue Beever's book, OFF THE SHELF FABRIC PAINTING, she gives two recipes for making one's own rice paste. Her's she claims is quite resistent and good for stenciling and leaf printing.

She also says that a thin paint will breach the resist more quickly... and that be part of the problem I had. My paint was quite thin and watery.

I need to do some new painting and see what different effects I can get by using this stuff. And maybe make up my own rice paste to compare the differences.