Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking

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Credit - I have learned a lot from various blogs, but this has been a terrific purchase and gives much more on the history and techniques of ink making. You can throw almost any pigment-rich base ingredient into an old pot with vinegar and salt, boil it up for an hour or two, add a couple drops of gum arabic, and voila—you have an ink.

com/ or if you like seeing more projects for kids, I post half-baked ideas here sometimes also: https://www.

Today however I was tidying up and found the bottle and also a packet of gum Arabic I had bought before Christmas. When you’re satisfied with the depth of colour, strain out the dye into a bowl, through a sieve lined with a muslin cloth. In a glass bottle, add gum arabic (one part to 10 parts ink) and a whole clove or a drop of wintergreen (as a preservative). Although I was hoping for a more of a reference book than a guide book I found this book inspiring - I have done natural dying and foraging but this is an exciting idea - especially with my current love of fountain pens.

The next step is to combine the ink with iron which you can do at home with an iron vinegar solution. Michael Ondaatje is a celebrated poet, novelist, editor, and filmmaker, best know for his 1970 poetry collection The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, and his 1992 Booker Prize–winning novel The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film by the same name in 1996. It isn't about taking too much of something – the birds, insects and animals rely on this plant too. Tip - for very 'pulpy' inks, a better pre-filter is Japanese Tea Bags, (last picture) as these strain out the water well, but you'll need to re-boil and filter through tissue again to get a clearer ink. I collected them from the ground and many had been half eaten by squirrels, but that doesn’t matter at all.Tip - In hindsight this seems obvious, but Lavender didn't give a good purple ink, as even though the flowers were vibrant, they were overwhelmed by the green parts. At The National Archives collection we have documents that contain many different types of inks and paints.

Gum Arabic—dried sap from the gum acacia tree—has extensive use as an art material, especially as the binder for watercolor and gouache. Of course, sometimes it’s nice to be alone, but being able to make art in a domestic setting was something I wanted for myself.Cooking time varies quite a lot, but you're looking for between 5-10mins when the colour is leaching out of the ingredient you added, and is not looking much more intense. There are various shades you can achieve with each original color by documenting experimentations/swatches, shifting pH, and adding modifiers/mordants. The downside of this is that you might lose detail in the stamp as the paste could overfill the stamp. The ink was long gone, but I remembered perfectly how it layered on the paper, [building] from coffee to chocolate to mahogany brown.