Making Ink: Mullberry x3

 

We have several mulberry trees in the neighborhood.  Last week I collected a handful of berries, staining my hands a deep purple.  This tree makes sweet and tasty berries!

I've been waiting for the mulberries to ripen, so I could make ink out of them.

Recipe for making Mulberry Ink from Jyotsna at Lost in Colors.  It's pretty simple!  

1. Just crush the berries 
2. and simmer to extract the color
3. then strain out the solids.  
4. Experiment with a few mordants (Natural, iron, alum, baking soda, vinegar) and see what you get! 
5. Gum Arabic can be added as a thickener and to improve flow. [Since I have a good supply, I did add this.]

Because I had about 1 cup of crushed berries, I added an equal amount of water and simmered it down for a while.  When I strained out the solids, I had about 1/2 cup of liquid left, which I split into 3 small Penzy's spice jars. [I have since read that it's better to add vinegar as liquid since it will help preserve the ink.]

I put them back on the stove in a pan of water, making a sort of double boiler for each little pot of mulberry ink.

Experimenting with mordants and pH to see color changes:

1.   I left 1 pot eau natural
2.   To the 2nd pot, I added a pinch of steel wool from an SOS pad (I washed off the soap).   The addition of the steel wool as iron mordant seemed to turn the ink bluer.
3. To the 3rd pot, I added about 1/4 tsp alum.

I would like to play with some other mordants to see other color changes I can get -- baking soda or citric acid would be interesting, too!

The difference between the three is remarkable!

 Mulberry Ink Pots

This is how they dried.  Later, they were all darker still. 

Mulberry Ink seems quite mercurial.  It oxidizes as it dries and changes color ...  Although, sometimes the ink will dry on paper BEFORE it has a chance to oxidize, and you get a different color yet.

 

Here the ink is still wet. 

 

Here the ink is still wet. 

 

Here the ink is still wet.

 

 This is how it dried.

It's been fun to play with mixing the 3 mulberry inks on paper, along with a dash of metallic watercolor paints.

 

 

I only had enough ink to make 3 experimental pots, but now I want to try other mordants to see what happens with baking soda or vinegar or copper.  The world is open wide on this front! 

 

THis is a sample akin to a sop cloth.  I was trying to get the color out of a paint brush.  The background wash is beat root ink, but the purple on top is Mulberry.  This dried before it oxidized, so it stayed this lovely purple.