The Kambucha Leather experiment was a long, interesting and informative process which was done over a period of almost two months. I liked learning about how one could make leather simply by mixing everyday materials such as vinegar, sugar and water just by adding a scoby. My final Kambucha, as can be seen from the pictures, grew very unevenly and gave me a variety of colors. Some parts with thin, flakey and light. Some parts were thicker, still quite sticky and was much darker. I took this to my advantage and played around with the material.
My idea for the Kambucha was to make accessories. I decided specifically on friendship bracelets following the concept of each one, teach one. Now since we have learnt about kambucha leather, a step closer to sustainability, I believe that it is important to spread this word. Just as we were taught, we should teach another! The friendship bracelet consists of 2 pieces, one for you and one for a friend. By this, not only are you wearing and in a way promoting the kambucha, you are also introducing another friend to this concept!
The process of making the kambucha was time consuming, however I did not face much difficulties or problems with the kambucha during the process. It was kept in a warm place and dried out on wood. To make my final prototype, I cut the the kambucha up into smaller pieces and designs and used to stickier parts to make connections. As you can see from my sketches, my final prototype more or less stuck to the same idea except I got to play around with the textures even more.
