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Rivikah

So I've been playing around with making an ink. I blame @evilrooster

This would be a pretty old style iron-gall ink except I don't have oak galls. I have arbutus bark instead.

Arbutus bark: This stuff just falls off the tree in my front yard this time of year in these thin, brittle, brown sheets. I picked this up off the ground, crumbled it into smallish pieces and stuck it in this little cloth bag so it would be easier to fish out at the end.

1/x

Small pieces of arbutus bark in various shades of reddish brown scattered out of a little blue cloth bag.
#ink#meMade#LocalMaterials
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Rivikah

Rusty screws:

These came out of the back fence when it blew down a couple of years back. Just completely ordinary rusty screws

2/x

Four screws covered in orange rust and a few non-rusting bits.
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Rivikah

And it all gets stuck in an old glass jar that I fished out of the recycling with water just enough to cover.

This was on Friday. I put the lid on to keep it from spilling and left the whole thing in the sun.

3/x

A glass jar. The screws are visible through the clear water at the bottom and the bag of bark fills it a little over half way. Water fills the jar almost to the top of the bag.
Rivikah

And here it is today. No longer clear for sure.

4/x

The same jar tipped slightly sideways so that the dark liquid can be seen.
Rivikah

I've been poking it with a stick every day or so to kind of stir it up and see how it's doing. Today I also used that stick to test it on some paper.

Looks like it works.

I'm going to leave it in the sun for a couple more days and then experiment with binders. Gum arabic is traditional, but I don't have any. The internet says, maybe honey?

5/5

A piece of white paper with some drops and the letter T in brown ink.
Rivikah

I decanted it into two spice jars from the dollar store on Friday. Then I added a spoonful of honey to one of them as a binder.

Left it out on the deck for a couple of very hot days this weekend and...

Yep. That's ink. I tried writing with various implements. It's nice. Some of the brown colour seems to be gone in my most recent samples. They look more grey. Not sure why!

Not sure I can really tell the difference between the one with honey and the one with no honey either.

Two glass spice jars of dark ink, a metal nibbed dip-pen, and a sharpened stick sitting beside a writing sample that reads: What about a metal nib? I think it might not be thick enough for this not bad though I actually quite like this. What if I do use some honey? What if I don't use any honey?
#ink#MeMade
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Rivikah

Remember the arbutus-iron ink that I made this summer? I broke it out to write my holiday cards.

It now has a distinct alcohol scent. I'm guessing the honey I used as a binder fermented?

A stack of cards, a jar of ink, and a metal nibbed dip pen are laid out on a wooden surface.
#ink#meMade
Abi Sutherland

@Rivikah

I tried egg white, but I don't know that I did it right. In the end I took the ink home in a clothlet and used gum arabic.

Rivikah

@evilrooster I know! I'm so excited!

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