 Okay guys, we are back again with part two lake pigments now when you're making paint pigments lake pigments from my Understanding our pigments that are made for soaking something in water To extract the color from it then you drain off the chunky bits and you take the water and there's a Chemical process for pulling the color out of the water in layman's terms. I don't completely understand it I'm still working on Why you can get the color how you can get the color which things added to what the water give you what color? All of that stuff, but that's the basics So we are going to go back with the garbage weird flowers I found in my collection from part one and I put the rest of the flowers in my Blender because I do want to chop them up a little bit Before I put them in the jar So let's do that I do find that you can pull more color color out of the item Whether it's a fresh item or in this case a dried item if you chop it up a little bit first and you just keep it easy I either use this grinder if it's dry or I have another bigger blender thing I have used in the past for making paper that I got really cheap at the grocery outlet a discount grocery store and I'll for fresh things. I'll use that But whatever it is. I just find it's easier If I grind it up, I'm gonna whack this on the table to get the dry bits off the bottom Okay, again wear a mask when you're doing this because you will find smoke will come up and hit you in the face You don't want to breathe that in So I'm gonna put all of the Dry material in here at least as much of it as I can get in there without spilling it on the table Which I'm not Being very successful at doing Okay So I use these small five ounce jars because I don't want to make Necessarily a ton of pigment especially with the new things. I'm not sure what color. I'm gonna get if any So I always do a small batch and then if I find I get a really great color out of it And I really like it then I will go back and make more So now that I have the ground flowers in there I'm just gonna fill it up. This is distilled water You do want to be careful about using distilled water because it will help eliminate some bacteria and See, there's already some color in the water It's only been like two seconds and the water is already turning color. So that means we'll get something or we should get something So now I let this sit for at least a few hours, but usually overnight Before I go on to the next step That being said, I will say that you don't When you're doing this process, don't get your hopes up just because this is a pretty color of brown already Doesn't mean that that's the color you're gonna end up with or that it's gonna work Well, some of them for whatever reason work better than others some of them I Don't know if I'm just doing chemically something wrong, but I just end up pulling no color from for instance I have right next to me a failed one So we have these porch flowers verbinia I think that's what they are and they're purple and when I slate when I soaked them in some water The water was very very purple When I used them fresh I got this pretty green right here When I licked them and went through the whole process of soaking it and then in the next part I'll show you how what we do with this after I got this Which is in purple or green and Do you even see any color on there because I don't yeah, so I'm not sure That might just be a garbage So they don't all come out But in the meantime, we're gonna let this sit at least overnight and we'll come back to it And then I'll show you what else we do with that Okay, guys, I'm just coming on here because it's only been not even an hour and can you see the color of that water? so when you're laking your pigments if you get that a Color that's nice and dark like that. You're gonna get something out of the Laking process as far as pigment is concerned right now looking at this you would think it's gonna be brown But there's no guarantees I've done red roses like this the waters very red But when all is said and done because of the chemical reactions the pigment actually comes out actually a very pretty green So we'll just have to wait and see I am gonna go ahead and leave it set overnight even though I kind of want to see what it does now. We're not gonna do that. I'm gonna give it a shake Which is what I do now. You can of course Simmer these in hot water. I don't do that. I'm sure you'd get a different Color maybe maybe more pigment out of it if it was warm I never do that sometimes I warm up the distilled water and put it in there, but I Find I get Pigments just fine doing it this way. So that's just up to me. You guys should try it a couple of different ways and see what happens All right Enough of that. I'll be back for you guys in just a minute for me. I'll be tomorrow. I'll be back Hey guys, all right, so it's a few days later for me just a minute or second for you So this has been sitting for a couple of days To my surprise the water has turned nice dark brown. I didn't really expect that but cool. So once you've soaked your Usually botanical thing from that you want to make your paint pigment from If you're doing it my way for at least 24 hours Sometimes I just let it go until I kind of have forgotten about it and then I come back and drain it If you're simmering it on the stove Then you just simmer it for like an hour or so now I will say in my experience Simmering the item versus just leaving it in the jar and soak you get different colors with some Things some things you'll get the same color. It's just quicker to simmer it I have not found any issue so far with just putting it in a jar with like room temperature or warm water And just leaving it sit for a couple of days that being said if you're gonna try this you might want to try a Couple of different ways and see what way it works for you So, okay, so we are going to strain this in a fine mesh strainer over this large pot As soon as I get it open Someday. Oh, hold on. I got it. I had to use my handy-dandy tool to our opening tool Okay, so the first thing you want to do Once you're ready to make your like pigment out of it is we're gonna strain Off the chunky bits because you just want the colored water So we're gonna just pour it in here now sometimes I'll take the pulp and I'll put it in a cookie sheet on wax paper and set it aside for a few days and Let it dry out and use it as sort of an earth pigment that being said when you've had the pulp soaking in the water you usually get sort of a lighter color Of whatever this was gonna be originally, but sometimes it's interesting sometimes It just is an interesting texture to add to like acrylic paint for like a texture thing. So but in this case I'm just gonna let it go. Okay I need We'll use this. I'm just gonna kind of do this and make sure I've gotten all the water out Okay, this is trash So we're gonna dump that Okay, now we have this there are some like chunk like little bits of material floating in there But I'm okay with that I could probably run it through another strain with a coffee filter But and you might want to do that. I'm not going to Okay, so the next I'm going to add some Alam and again, this is five ounces of water So I add one teaspoon of alum now if I've taken the alum and dissolved it in water It's a one-to-one mix and then I will dissolve it in water and then I'll add two tables a teaspoons of that alum water to The pigment powder or pigment water There is some kind of chemical reaction that I don't really understand when I add the alum to the water that changes the color nine times out of ten Give it a good stir Make sure all the chunks are dissolved. That's why it's sometimes good to Dissolve the alum and water ahead because it's easier to Add it and get it dissolved once you're pretty sure it's dissolved Then you need a tablespoon and some baking soda or washing soda And a tablespoon of baking soda now if you again want to dissolve your baking soda in water before you do this it's one part baking soda to eight parts water and then do two tablespoons of that water mixture in This case we're going to just use the dry now You want a big container for this because this is going to bubble and foam up if you've added enough alum If it doesn't bubble and foam up add more alum because you haven't added enough See It should do that. That's exactly what it should do Give it a good stir. Make sure everything's dissolved There's something about the chemical process between the alum and the baking soda That allows the color in the water to grab on to the alum The baking soda makes it sink to the bottom And that becomes your pigment powder later. Now what you want to do is just let that sit now I let it sit for Minimum a couple hours sometimes overnight And then I will Do the next step. I have a little video clip of me doing that next step which I will insert here Okay, if you hear that jingling in the background my husband is out running around in the front yard And it's the security camera, so I apologize so once you've taken the Pigment sort of gelatinous stuff that's left in the coffee filter after you drain off the water and you put it on this Piece of wax paper. You've let it dry for a couple of days. It will get hard and Then this is your pigment. So then You just carefully Using a palette knife That jingling is just hold on one second Turn off the sound on my phone and see if that helps. Okay So you use a flat edge of the palette knife carefully and just scrape the pigment from the coffee filter Now I don't usually bother grinding it Until I'm gonna use it But in this case, this is kind of a lot and so I'm going to Grind it because it'll fit in my container better. So hang on when you're grinding it like when you're doing earth pigments You want to remember to take precautions Wear our gloves wear a mask wear some eye protection I'm going to pour all of this into my grinder, which is the corner of your screen and again, this is just a mr. Coffee Coffee and spice grinder It doesn't say which one but this is one that does coarse medium or fine I always have it turned to fine because most of it on Put my mask up and grind oops after I turn the power on There we go. There's two things. I want to point out See how the texture of this is very flower like That's what you want on your pigment ideally to get a nice smooth paint out of it, but See the color of this that came out This is my failed one the verbinia, which obviously I didn't bother to grind too well Yeah, and this one has no color So I'm not super confident this one's gonna have any color either But I guess at some point before I decide to add it to the shelf I'll find out In the meantime, we're gonna set that one aside and I've got two more to do these are The Butterfly pea flowers that in their raw natural form give you a very nice pretty blue paint That blue right there. I Don't know what happens if you lake them So I did lake them and I guess we'll find out so let me let me do what I just did with the other one to these And I'll be right back. Hey, there's a small possibility. It was wrong about the pansy flowers but let's Test it out. No with some colors They do change It's a very pale yellow, but it is definitely yellow So I might have been wrong about that With some colors they change as they dry and You will find if you're gonna experiment with this as I think I've said before some like the Butterfly pea flower which if you use that ground flower again in the paint medium It's very blue if you extract the color from the flower in the laking process and then make paint from it It's a very pretty green. I mean I'm not mad about those colors. So yes, I'll be keeping the pansy pigment This is the one that I still think is a failure. I put some water in here It's been dry for a couple of days But I mean Can you see anything because I can't really I don't there's really not much there So I do think this particular one is a failure If I'm gonna keep one of these I'm gonna keep this one because that's actually a very pretty pale yellow Pastel yellow, but anyway, so I'll have to wash that one out and that's a failure But that's how it goes with some of these I'm having a lot of fun making pigments and Painting with them. This is a little Besides my notes that I've been keeping. This is a little small journal that I've been using with the paint if you Are somebody who knows more about making pigments than I do and you have some suggestions to improve what I'm doing or You know kind criticism about something I'm doing wrong Please let me know down in the comments below or send me a private message If you're in my Facebook group, you can tag me in a post over there If you try making your own pigments whether you just grind up things to put in a paint medium Or you try the laking process. I would love to see how your experiments turned out and what you're doing with them There are going to be some things that you want to make earth or lake pigments from but you have to grind them or dry them and Or dry them first like red onion now red onion in its natural form Gives I know it's a red onion, but I get this pretty green now anybody who's made dye at red onions knows if you simmer I'm you get a red color. I got this green color from just ground red onions powdered And added to the paint medium when I laked the red onions. I got brown. They're on here somewhere They're on here somewhere. Oh here red onion Now I haven't boiled the red onions and then laked the boiling water. That's red. I have this feeling I'd still get the brown because of the chemical reactions now What I do with things like red onion, especially food things is I will grind them and basically Puree them in a blender with no water or very little water Then I will spread them out thin in a cookie sheet on a piece of parchment paper And I'll put it in the oven at the lowest temperature for like three or four hours and really dried out Until it's crumbly and then come upstairs blend it with my grinder and then use that as either An earth pigment or use it to soak in water as a lake pigment. That works actually very well There's a video here on YouTube about salting Vegetables, I think that's what it's called. I'll find it and I'll put the link down below and I use his process for making pigments out of more food type things or even like the wild blackberries Things that are very like thick and juicy That aren't flowers with the flowers I also grind them up, but then I spread them out on a cookie sheet And I just leave them up here in the art room for a couple of days and they just dry out real easy But with more thick pulpy things I think you have to dehydrate them in the oven, but it does work very well. I have a Cumin this is the earth side. This is the lake side. You see the lake side It's got a lot of browns in it. Well, now it's gonna have this real pretty green and a yellow I have yet to have a blue or a red But I can use some of these with some of these and that works So and the turmeric this is another one so turmeric straight added to paint medium You get this dark yellow if you lake the turmeric and do the process. We just did you get this orange So anyway See what you can Come up with with this process where it leads you where you go and what kind of new art things you can come up with I'd love to see please share like share and subscribe Again tag me in a post on social media somewhere if you try this and or you have information to share with me I'd love to hear it and Above all have fun stay safe stay healthy stay creative go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it I'll see you later. Bye guys