Free Bark Mulch Can Be Used For Eco-Leather Dye Arts & Crafts

Freshly-shredded, old-growth, tree bark mulch can be repurposed as an eco-friendly tanner for hand-dyeing custom leather goods. The children can batik dye old leather with their monograms.

Ideally, it's collected from the inner barks of the live trees, and simmered to extract the elegiac acid or phlobaphenes, which gives it the varying colorations.

Elegaic acid is contained in the pyrogallols, or hydrolysable types of barks. Those make the leather more sturdy, and waterproof. That acid dyes it a light cream, pastel yellow or light brown colors.

Phlobaphenes are obtained from catechols, or condensed bark types. Those are more astringent, with a faster dye process. The colors obtained are: dark brown, reds, and pinks.

The type of bark used, amount of water, water temperature for chemical extraction, stretching, hand-rolling and "raking" will affect the way the leather's grain appears, its structural integrity/durability and pliability/softness/flexibility. Other factors are amounts of time spent on the tanning (soaking), and the thickness of the leather.

Some say that it's best to calculate 2x the weight of your leather hide to estimate how much freshly, and finely-shredded inner tree bark to use.