Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking

Product Information

I find that it’s fine to use for a few months, but obviously keep a close eye on it, and label it clearly so other people in your home don’t mistake it for a sauce!

If you plan to use your ink for a pen, try to limit yourself to just a few drops of gum arabic for each small bottle. i would include this book as an essential book for those interested in wonder, colour, paper and ink, whether you are an urban or rural person. Don't worry about having too much water, this is often better than too little, as it means the solution does not 'saturate' quickly (i.

I knew I’d be soaking the walnuts for quite a few days and just didn’t want the mess in one of my aluminium pots — the metal is reactive and can be very hard to clean.

All tools including bottling jars should be sterilized or run through the dishwasher before and after use.In this activity we make ink using blue berries, but you can make ink using black berries, raspberries or cherries with the same recipe. I absolutely cannot wait to start ink alchemy with my own foraged finds and this book will have been the catalyst. I was very kindly sent a beautiful handcarved fern stamp by Jessica from Jess Nicole Stamps, and I planned to make some kind of plant-based ink. After discovering how easy it is to create ink using plants and food scraps, I never looked at anything the same again.

This is part of the reason that the inks he makes are nontoxic, safe for his kids—and everyone else’s—to use. As mentioned earlier, if you are not sure of the safety of the plant, err on the side of only what you'd eat. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.I poured the mixture into a couple of small bowls and let the paint evaporate on a windowsill for a few days. His illustrations appear regularly in the New York Times and his fine art has been exhibited in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, and the Yukon. If you are wanting to get into more serious ink/dye making with kids, I would suggest you get a pan that you *never* use for cooking food in. This is something I have heard about with mordants for wool dying but have never tried, and I used Nick Neddo’s recipe from his amazing book, The Organic Artist. One of the biggest reasons I’ve transitioned to creating art with natural ingredients is to discover a sustainable and earth friendly practice.

However, the real reason for adding a Clove is that it has antibacterial properties, and so keeps your ink free(er) from mould. For instance, black walnuts impart a brown colour despite their name and lime-green husk, and the deep purple berries of buckthorn bestow a hazy light green. Logan is the founder of the Toronto Ink Company, which makes street-foraged artists’ inks from plants harvested around the city.With all this said, I’ve always embraced an intuitive and experimental approach to color extraction.