Batik donated to Elephants for Africa

Last weekend I popped along to the annual Bristol Festival of Nature event. My first stop was to the marquee housing many conservation organisation stands. Elephants for Africa, who I have mentioned in previous posts, were in this marquee and I was delivering one of my batik pieces to them in the hope that they can use it in whatever way they see fit to raise some funds for their work with elephants in Botswana. Dr Kate Evans, who is the founder of the charity, hopes to auction it off at a fund raising event sometime in the near future.


And in case you have no idea what batik is... by applying hot melted wax to a surface (in this case, cotton) a 'resist' is formed. This enables colour to be painted/dyed over the entire surface and the colour 'takes' only where the surface is free of wax. In this way, by applying successive applications or 'layers' of wax and colour, an image is created... the more layers of colour and wax the more complex the image. In this case over 20 layers/applications of colour and wax were used.