I told you about the red geranium paint I brewed.



After the shell experience there were about 100-150 ml of the stuff still to go.




I put it back in the pot (including the crystals at the bottom) and let it boil (the crysals dissolved rather quickly). Then I added 2 teaspoons of aluminium hydroxide, also known as hydrous clay (Tonerdehydrat). The clay is supposed to absorb the red dye.





Which it did, I think.





Now all of the water has to go.
For four days now the stuff is standing in a water bath. The first day went pretty well, I was at home all the time and could regulate the heat.
Now I’m working again and there are only the evenings to heat the water.




I’m to impatient for this kind of stuff!

After a weekend of beeing away from reality, having fun, making plans and not beeing trown out of the ICE-train, I’ve returned home to find my geranium shell - which was well-filled when I left - looking like this:



It’s hardly surprising, considering that the plant sap consists of 99,9% water ...

Neither it’s completely dried.

I think I could sink all the sap in the shell - but I won’t!
Instead I will use the rest for the pigment.

Wish me luck!

Fortune favoered me with some spare time last weekend. And so - with my boyfriend busying himself with bike preparations - I took my chances and a box of dried geranium flowers and started another attempt at producing paint.





As usual the flowers were cooked in an alum solution.
The crystals disolved rather quickly in the hot water. (I used about 15 teespoons and about 300 ml of water)
After adding the flowers it looked like this:





After 15 minutes of cooking.
At the surface there happend some crystalisation each time I stopped stirring.





And indeed there water was red:





I put the whole bulk in a jar ...





... and then sifted it.
The result was a jar full of red sap colour with a layer of crystal at the bottom.





And now for the really interesting part:
When painted it looks like this





The darker stain glitters!
It’s the same effect as with the elderberry batch.
The book does not mention this - I think it’s some of the remaining alum crystalising.
Glitzy!

I already started drying some of it in a shell, and I plan another attempt at producing some pigment - using a different method this time.

It’s time for me to tell you what I did with all the apple-bark-paint-sites I was working on ...

First for the sap.
You may remember this yellowish looks-like-egg-paint glas?



First of all I actually made some "Glue-size" from it. I took a small strip of white linen and soaked it in the sap. After letting it go dry I repeated the process. And again. And ...
I don’t remember exactly how often I did this, but I think it was about five times ...

Now it looks this:



If soaked in water the paint should liquidate and be paintable againt. So much for theory, the practice is jet to come ...

After this process there was still a lot of sap to go, so I poured it in another shell to let it go dry.



This is the sappy-sap,



and this ist the dried-sap.

It’s still very easy dissolvable and when painted still looks like this:



Next time wil be about the pigments.

I think I’ve made some pigments. May as well be dirt, I’m not sure.

Remember the colour-sap?
I carefully added a few teaspoons of soda-water (sodium carbonate and water) to the sap. The Book said to use only a few drops but I ended using up about half a cup.
The sap begun to foam, which it should.
After vigorous stirring, the foam was sifted through a thin cloth.
A layer of ... foamy, muddy, greasy stuff remained and was stored in the sun to dry.

Now it looks like this, and it should be pigment.
Also it should be yellow.



I don’t know about you, but I’m not really impressed.
Nevertheless I will consult The Book and try to make watercolours out of it. One can never have enough ochre.

The remaining liquid seems to be also a kind of ochre.


and when painted and dried looks like this:



I don’t know what to do with it.
Maybe I’ll add some gum arabic to make ink.
Or I’ll concentrate it further to make these shell-thingies again.
Or I soak some tissue to make "Glue-size" (the german term is "Tüchleinfarbe")
Or ...
So much possibilities!
What do you thing?

Yesterday I cooked the apple bark with water and alum for about an hour. (Making a high concentrated Alum-Solution is not that simple, I have to find another way for doing this.)
And now I have about 200 ml of something that looks a bit like this colours you use to dye your eastereggs with. It has a layer of crystals at the bottom which I’m hoping to dissolve by careful heating.

Next thing I have to do is to precipitate the Yellow and thereby not to muck up the Kitchen.

I spent the Weekend at my parents to check up with my hibernating plants (a lot of which seem to have died), meet up with a bunch of friends (all alive and healthy) and pick up a bag of apple-tree-bark from an apple-tree-branch my father saw of a couple of weeks ago.

The book says there is a yellow colour hidden in somewere therein.
And I intend to go looking for it!
The next step is to cook the bark with an alum-solution.

Wish me luck.

Last Summer someone gave mit this awesome book about paint made from plants. There ist really fascinating stuff in it. Did you know that your can make yellow paint from apple twigs? Or red paint from beetroot? Well, no surprise there ...

In the fall I did some experiments with elderberries. I made some plant sap and ink with the juice from the berries, alum and gum arabic. I dried the sap in a shell.





Now it’s hard and crystalline and it glitters.
But it’s still soluble in water which means I can paint with it!

Last week I did a greeting card in with I used the shell.



It’s a really great violet which does funny things in the process of drying. The red dye consists of Anthocyanin which ist sensible to acid and lye.
The fresh, wet paint is more reddish.





But as it dries it turns more into a violet shade.



I apologise for the blurry pictures (and the missing frame). I had a row with the camera ...



What do you think? Should I do (and tell you) more of this?