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Blackberry Ink: Dye-based

Materials: ½ cup blackberries, bowl, fork, fine strainer (like for tea), cup

Directions: Place blackberries in a bowl and use the fork to mash them to extract the juice. Place the strainer over the cup and press the blackberry material through the strainer so that the juice collects in the cup without the fruit matter.

*bonus: To extract even more pigment and juice, place left over matter in a sauce pan with ¼ cup water and simmer for 10 minutes. Repeat the straining process

From here you can use your ink as is, or you can add 1 teaspoon vinegar and ½ teaspoon salt as a preservative and binding agent.

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Blackberry ink

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Blackberry Ink final product

I divided the juice in half to compare pure to the vinegar/salt additive. It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but the vinegar and salt didn’t change the viscosity or absorption, but it did change the color

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Black Ink: Pigment based

Step 1: Make the pigment: lampblack (soot from burning oil or wax)

Materials: Cheap candle, two old spoons, matches or lighter, containers for the pigment

Directions: Light candle, hold spoon over the flame to collect the soot from the smoke. Once enough black matter has accumulated on the spoon, use the second spoon to scrape it into your container. Repeat as necessary until you reach ½ teaspoon. Warnings: Do this outside and note that the spoon will get hot -- use a towel to hold the spoon if necessary.

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Adding pigment to a base

Ink 1: Egg white and honey base

Add ¼ pigment to 1 tablespoon of egg white and honey mixture (1 egg white and ½ cup honey). Stir well.

Ink 2: Coconut oil base

Add 1/4 pigment to 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil. Stir well

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Lampblack Ink

Honey and egg white

Pigment and mixture

Pigment and oil

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Lampblack Ink

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Commercial Ink

On the left is calligraphy ink written with a brush. On the right is pen ink and calligraphy ink with respective writing tools.

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Homemade Inks using calligraphy pen and stamp tools

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Takeaways

The blackberry ink with the calligraphy pen performed the best, and the lampblack oil mixture using the brush performed the second best

The homemade inks still don’t compare to the commercial synthetic inks

Both writing with a calligraphy pen and a brush are slower than writing with a modern pen

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