Urine crystal bling

Fashion student Alice Potts has hit on the idea of adding some bling to clothes by embellishing them with crystals formed from bodily excretions such as sweat and urine. She says, "Instead of using plastic accessories to maybe embellish garments ... we can start like growing onto our garments these new materials and more natural materials."

Her website: http://www.alicepotts.com
More info: Huff Post

I'm assuming she must have made the crystals using a technique similar to the one outlined in the video below. She just added urine or sweat in addition to the other ingredients.

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jul 11, 2018
Category: Fashion | Science

Comments

Erm... I spot a problem. The constituents of urine and sweat are, by necessity, highly soluble in water. What will happen if you take your nice urea crystal out in the rain?

(Also: that woman had a bloody awful webshite. Why do so many new-idea artists have utterly stylish but completely unusable websites?)

Posted by Richard Bos on 07/14/18 at 03:49 AM

I delve enough into historical chemistry to know urine is(was) a valuable source of phosphorus and the nitrates for making gunpowder. Although crystals of it should be harmless, unexpected chemical reactions do happen. Having the ingredients for some really nasty burns next to your skin probably isn't a good idea.

Posted by Phideaux on 07/14/18 at 02:33 PM

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