So it's been a couple years since I updated this blog. Just gonna ignore the elephant in the room that is Covid, 'kay? We'll file it under "Life Happens" and "Good Intentions" and move on...
So I've rediscovered my own creativity and (lol) started organizing the basement (again, lol), and have been working on junk journaling – or at least some sort of hybrid of that and art journals. And since I am still reluctant to go shopping out in the world, and many art supplies that I don't already have are more than I want to spend for something I don't even know I'll be doing a few months from now, I decided to make my own alcohol ink.
I used a set of food coloring I found on Amazon that already had a large number of colors, small perfume mister bottles, and we already had the 91% isopropyl alcohol on hand for 3D printing. (I'll put Amazon links at the end. I am not an affiliate, and earn nothing from the links.)
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| What I used to make the alcohol inks. |
I didn't measure the alcohol, only filled the bottles roughly halfway. The bottles (came in 10-packs, I ordered 2 with the idea that if any were defective I'd have spares, plus extras for whatever) held 10 milliliters. To each of those bottles that now contained about 5mL of alcohol I added 10 drops of food color.
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| I made a very janky stand to hold the bottles, and carefully labeled each color. |
The colors didn't immediately mix, possibly because of the glycerine in the food coloring. Screwing the lid on firmly and keeping my thumb on the cap and giving them all a good shake distributed the color pretty well, but red and pink still have precipitate and need to be shaken before each spritz. (NBD.)
Next I needed to do a color test and see how true and vibrant the colors were. I grabbed a handful of white cardstock and laid them out on my cutting mat to protect the table, and set up more card to catch overspray.
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| Though I was worried about the red, it's pretty good! The green is approaching teal, though. |
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| Pink is HOT pink, Grape is like Concord grape juice, and Violet absolutely is. |
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| I think I'd need to add more dye to get true Navy, but it's a nice color. I didn't expect Black from no more dye than I added and I didn't get it. |
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| Comparing Grass Green to Green, it's easy to see which has more blue, more yellow. This sheet shows a better representation of Lemon Yellow, and Sunset Yellow is orange. The Brown color is a nice medium brown. |
I am overall quite pleased with this experiment. There are of course many inexpensive alcohol ink sets on Amazon, but the reviews are often mixed. One of the cheaper sets I saw has 16 10mL bottles and 4 of those bottles are white. Not including the white, it has the same number of colors in the same size bottles as the food coloring I bought, for a similar price (the ink is about $1 cheaper as of this writing). BUT, with my 10mL bottles of food coloring, I will be able to make MANY bottles of ink, and I still have some of those spray bottles left over that I can make some custom colors if I want. The only thing I lack that would have made this easier is a pipette to transfer the alcohol into the bottles – that would have been much easier than pouring with a funnel.
Depending how you count, each bottle of DIY ink cost me between $1.70-2.10 (the higher price factors in the fact that I needed to buy 20 mister bottles to get the 12 I actually needed, the lower price only considers the price per bottle).
Amazon links (not sponsored, no affiliation, no kickbacks – this is what I used):
Mister bottles
Food coloring
Isopropyl alcohol 91%, available from any drugstore
