I made a batch of beet root ink a few months ago, but neglected to take good photos of the experiments. It's not an ink that keeps very well, so I had to wait until we had beets again to eat.
I worked up 4 versions, and the best one was the unadulterated cold from the fridge version of beet juice left over from boiling some beets to eat a week ago.
For the others, I reduced the juice to concentrate the pigments, then split them into 3 little jars.
- plain, just reduced
- with a pinch of steel wool from an SOS cleaning pad (minus the soap)
- with alum
The only one that made any marks on paper worth keeping was the straight up beet juice, still cold from the fridge. I know from experience that the beet root ink doesn't keep very long or well. So you have to use when you have it.
Beet Root ink with a little metallic watercolor on a library index card.
It makes a nice wash for backgrounds.
By the time I made this sample, I was mixing all the inks on trial that day. So this one includes not only beet root ink, but also Hibiscus and Mulberry ink, along with a little metallic watercolor.
As a side note: I just started a batch of Kvass, a fermented dink from Ukraine, made from beets, lemon, orange, ginger, salt and tumeric. It's looks gorgeous in the jar! We'll see how it tastes in a few weeks ... It's very salty right now, but that should be part of the pickling process.
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