This DIY watercolor paint tutorial is so much fun. You will be amazed at the beautiful watercolor ink you can create with plants from your own backyard.
Here's another fun project where you can make your own watercolors with plants from your backyard and things in your kitchen. Similar to natural egg dying you can easily make watercolor paints by extracting color from petals and berries with this easy tutorial.
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How to Make Watercolor Paint from Plants
Supplies
- flowers, leaves, berries...
- old pot you use for crafting
- watercolor paper cut into strips
- alum
- coffee filters or cheesecloth
- mason jar
- rubber band
- baking soda
- fresh lemon juice
- gum arabic
- pipette or dropper
- small funnel
- small glass bottles
- whole cloves
Place the plant material in a pot you use for crafting just to be on the safe side. I used about 1 cup of plant material and 2 cups of water for each batch.
Here's the mint simmering on the stove. I've added 1/2 teaspoon of alum as a mordant to help with colorfastness. Some people put vinegar and salt in their mixtures.
A coffee filter attached to the top of a mason jar makes a good filter.
Strain out the plant material collecting all the watercolor goodness below.
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Use a couple of bowls to magically create three colors from one batch. The original color is one. Then add some baking soda or lemon juice to two additional bowls to change the PH, thus changing the color.
Keep track of the experiments with strips of watercolor paper.
Surprisingly one whole clove is said to help preserve your concoction. I believe clove oil is supposed to work too.
Add some gum arabic to help thicken or bind the watercolor paint.
Plant Materials You Can Use
Safety Note: You won't be ingesting this but the fumes may cause issues so know your plants. Check out this article about poisonous plants for reference.
- Herbs: Mint, lavender, rosemary, basil, parsley
- Flower petals: Calendula, marigolds, coreopsis, petunias, peony, rose, and coneflowers.
- Berries. These worked the best and it's no wonder as they are saturated with color. Again if you are foraging beware of toxicity.
- Barks and Seeds - I have not tried them but many other sites use the bark and seeds of plants for this project.
- Spices and Teas: Turmeric makes a fantastic golden color.
How to Use Homemade Watercolor Paint
These are liquid watercolors even after adding gum arabic.
- Start with using a small paintbrush and some watercolor paper and make a little cheat sheet of each bottle.
- Dip the paintbrush into the water to clean between each color.
- Experiment with using a new color on top of another when it is wet and after it has dried.
- You may also want to dab off some of the paint or water onto a paper towel while working.
I was really fascinated about how pretty the colors turned out and hope that the watercolors last a long time.
More Crafting with Plants
Natural Watercolor Paints Made from Plants
Equipment
- small pot used for crafting not food
- small funnel that fits your bottles
Materials
- flowers, leaves, berries...
- watercolor paper cut into strips
- alum
- coffee filters or cheesecloth
- mason jar or other clean jar
- rubber band
- baking soda
- fresh lemon juice
- gum arabic
- pipette or dropper
- small glass bottles
- whole cloves
Instructions
- Gather plant materials. Rinse well and dry.
- Place about 1 cup of plant material in a pot. Stick to leaves or petals not stems.
- Cover with 2 cups of water.
- Add 1/2 teaspoon of alum and stir.
- Bring to a boil then turn the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Cut a piece of watercolor paper and dip it into the water to see the color.
- Continue to simmer the plants for a longer period and test again if desired.
- Remove from heat and allow the mixture to cool.
- Strain the ink from the plant material by attaching a coffee filter or cheesecloth to the top of a jar with a rubber band.
- Pour some of the watercolor paint into small bowls.
- Add some baking soda about 1/2 teaspoon to one bowl and 1/2 teaspoon or more of lemon juice to the other and see how the color changes.
- Add one whole clove to the bottle you will keep the paint in as a preservatie.
- Use a funnel to pour the results into the bottles.
- Add several drops of gum arabic as a binder to thicken the ink.
- Place a cap on each bottle and label them with paper and tape.
Carole West
This is really neat and I'm bookmarking this because when we get moved into our house this would be fun to try. I could pull items from nature and then create. LOVE!
Carole
Patti Estep
So glad you like it Carole. And, you're such a good watercolor artist it will be fun to see what you create.
Zuzanna
This is so neat! You have the greatest posts.
I look forward to trying it out next summer. I have all winter to figure out how to keep my sweetie from eating all the blueberries! 😉