Making plant paint

Today, I finally did it! I created something and followed it up with a blog post, that is a first. I have been making plant dyes for a while and the next step to make the paint. It is the only way to preserve the dye, otherwise the dye would become mouldy after a couple of weeks. I have a fridge shelf full of jars of plant dye, left over from a couple of workshops, which I held during the week. Both workshops were for young teens , who enjoyed seeing the colours change with the ph levels and creating colours from weeds such as nettles, dock leaves

Anyhow, here we are, I survived it. After stirring the alum and sodium carbonate into the plant dye (nettle and then cabbage) and letting it drip through coffee filter papers, I am half-way to making paint. It really is so simple, so easy I was on automatic pilot after the third one, even though it is supposed to encourage mindfulness. Thankfully no mishaps though. The main danger was Batgirl, the cat walking through the paint, so she was cast into the garden. After pitifully meowing at the window to get back in and being ignored, she has not yet returned.

The pigment is now drying at the landing window, most of the alum has been removed in the filtration process, so if Batgirl does walk through it, the only danger is having no paper in place to create a pretty picture of her footprints.