Art Meets STEM in Joondalup

Tie-Dyed T-shirts

Joondalup Destiny Girl Guides (aged 13 to 17) had been wanting to try tie-dying for some time and decided to give it a go on camp. After a delay due to Covid-19, camp took place on 7-9 May at Ern Halliday Windmill Site. The Guides looked at a number of different techniques and different dyes. They selected: • Rainbow Package dyes (add water, shake and apply to the damp t-shirt). • Turmeric simmered for an hour, then cooled. The shirts were then added to the liquid and soaked overnight. The colour in one tub was changed from yellow to red/orange by adding some bi-carb soda. • Boiling red cabbage for 4 hours gave us a vivid purple dye (although they didn’t enjoy the smell!). Some girls helped to squeeze the rest of the dye from the cabbage and for one Guide, this was her favourite part of camp! Guides were also able to make pink by adding some vinegar, or blue then green by adding bicarb soda to the purple dye. The rainbow shirts were amazing and the turmeric was very successful. The red cabbage was not as vivid as they had hoped so they might try this again. They then wore their tie-dyed shirts as active-wear to abseiling at Mountain Quarry later in the month.

Red Poppy Tutorial

The Joondalup Destiny girls have enjoyed a video painting tutorial before, so the Leaders linked this with Anzac Day and challenged them with a Red Poppy Tutorial. They mixed colours and blended the background of the sky using a few different techniques and add the bushes at the base of the image in the first session. Their easels were recycled pizza boxes. The second session involved adding the poppies, where Guides discovered techniques of incorporating perspective and distance, using object size and blending the colours differently. The Guides were justly proud of their amazing artworks.