Interested in DIY inks for painting? I don’t know how long the paintings retain their colour, but it would be worth trying out, I think. I plan to try this later on and I will photograph whatever I create (in case it does fade away . . .) ~ Linne
Yesterday was the first day of summer vacation for my daughters, and it’s already off to a promising start. My rising 2nd-grader slept in until just after 11 am, then promptly announced that she was “so, so bored.” I love boredom as a motivating force – Left to her own devices, she ended up collecting flower petals from around our garden with a plan to turn them into ink for a summer’s worth of art.
Since neither of us knew exactly how to make ink from flower petals, preferably in the most immediately gratifying way, we did a quick Google search and found these simple directions from GardenGuides.com that called for petals, boiling water, an overnight wait, and a few drops of rubbing alcohol.
Voila, this afternoon my daughter has her flower petal ink. Painting the test squiggle of each ink was great fun – Many of the petals turned…
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A Random Harvest 
I saved (and pinned) this as well, it looks like great fun 🙂
It will be interesting to see what some of the native flowers produce. I’m thinking that the more common dye-plants might be worth trying, too. We have a moss called ‘old man’s beard’ that grows on branches of some trees; it gives a yellow-tan dye, as I remember. Onion skins, too. And berries!
and walnuts! 😉
Oh, I forgot about walnut ink! You are so right. And I’m sure it’s permanent, too. I know the hulls were used to dye the uniforms for the Confederate Army back in the 1800s. I think other nuts can be used, too (well, the hulls, anyway).