Soma Acharya

“Hey child, stay wilder than the wind” is a line from one of my favourite songs by Duran Duran. This painting from my Lost Pages sketchbook always makes me think of that. I don’t consider myself a wild child, but I do love to be outside travelling and walking everywhere with my camera. When I am at home, early mornings, I work in the garden quite regularly while listening to the trees talking to each other. I often also bring little treasures back inside. That’s how I got started with botanical ink making.

When I was sharing my Simple365 daily photos previously, you asked me about the process.

You can make inks using many of the things you can find in your garden or kitchen, rose petals and onion skins being a couple of common examples. Please remember that many plants range anywhere from mildly to extremely poisonous. So please be careful, specially if you are working with children or/and around pets.

Also, some of the inks might cause permanent staining. Please make sure to take adequate precaution.

Now on to the fun part – ink making. It is super easy. I highlighted the materials you will need below in the instructions.

Add your foraged items to a mixture of 1 cup of water and 1 tsp of vinegar in an old saucepan and add heat. Once it comes to boil, turn the stove down to barely a simmer. Too much heat will turn everything brown.

Check the colour every now and then by dipping a strip of scrap paper in the liquid. As you can see in the second photo, the color changes over time. Once you have the desired colour, use a strainer to collect only the liquid in a heat resistant bottle like an old jam bottle.

You can stop here. For a cleaner ink, you can further filter the ink using a coffee filter set in a funnel.

Lastly, you can put a clove or two in the bottle to preserve the ink. That’s it!

These inks are ephemeral. If you want to preserve the artwork you create, I suggest you either scan or take a photo of it as soon as possible.

It will be so exciting to see what colour you would extract from the things you find around your home! I think with proper supervision this would make a fabulous activity to do with children.

I will wrap up the post with a few more paintings from the Lost Pages sketchbook. These are all my favourites.

Please Click on the image thumbnails to see the photos.

I would love to know which one is your favourite from these four.

I also hope you would give botanical ink making a try.

Until next time,
-Soma

I am linking up with the linky parties on my Events And Links page. Please pay a visit to some of them.

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This is a story about Charlie’s adventure. I shared this story once before when I made the quilt top. That was so many years ago that I thought would share the story one more time, along with the finished quilt.

Charlie is my sweet little orange kitty who, contrary to everyone’s belief, has a sweet tooth that would rival anyone. He would do anything to get a lick of ice-cream, watermelon, sweetened cream, or anything else sweet you can think of.

One day, Charlie learned that on All Hallows Eve, if he puts on a wizard’s hat and a bow tie and sits very very quietly amongst the Jack-O-Lanterns, magic leaves will come and carry him to the Land of the Seven Sisters who would give him lots and lots of sweets to eat. So he came to me and asked if I would make him a hat and a bow tie. I was happy to oblige.

As the evening approached, he donned his starry hat and bow tie, smartly walked outside, sat down in the pumpkin patch and waited very patiently.

Charlie has a very bossy sister and two very clueless brothers. They all love to play with Charlie. His sister specially loves Charlie and keeps a wary eye on him at all times. Charlie excitedly told her all about his plan. She didn’t really believe him, but she was not about to let him sit outside all alone either. Who knew what peril would befall her brother! She was also not going to leave the other two out of sight, because then she would have to spend the rest of the night looking for all of them if they got lost. So the bossy sister pushed the disgruntled brothers out the door and all of them surreptitiously waited a little distance away from little Charlie as the sun sank below the horizon.

They waited and waited and waited some more. Then, when everything had gone quiet, all the kids had gone home after their Trick-Or-Treat runs and the Jack-O-Lanterns were about to go out, they heard a rustle and a swoosh. Suddenly they were off, all four of them, carried away on gigantic leaves! These were no ordinary leaves, of course! On each one of them, a different adventure awaited the little kitties. They stayed together, hopped around and rolled from leaf to leaf, played, and had amazing fun.

All this time, while they were busy playing, the leaves carried them onward and upward to the Land of the Seven Sisters. By the time the little kitties got there, they were exhausted. They sat in the midst of stars and each had their favourite food to eat while watching the Jack-O-Lantern-lit Earth turning down below. Charlie had his most favourite sweets to eat that day and nobody was going to stop him. Slowly as the night got deeper, they fell asleep on top of each other and were carried gently and silently back down to earth, down to their soft, warm beds.

I had a wonderful time drawing, creating the layout, and designing the patterns for Charlie’s Adventure. I definitely had just as much fun as my little kitties. Charlie was all right with sharing the story with all of you as long as he and his beloved Papa could have the quilt.

Now I am really glad to have finished the quilt so that they can huddle under it together and dream of sweet things.

For the most part I did wavy quilting to depict the wind that blew them all to the Land of the Seven Sisters. I didn’t want to purchase new fabric for the binding, so I used some lime green material that I happened to have at hand. Although I had originally had a purple binding in mind, I rather like this one.

One day I would love to illustrate this story for a book.

As you know, Charlie does tend to come up a lot in my stories and artwork. This is a sketch I made of him trying to climb a wall. “Trying” being the operative word.

Last week I shared a little story about how he was one of the helpers of the Winter Fairy. You can read that little story here.

Charlie sat and supervised as I wrote the story. Actually, he was trying to convince me to give him some sweet treats. He was most disappointed when that didn’t work, “Nobody at home ever gives me anything!” So he went off to bed to dream about his special All Hallows Eve adventure while snoozing with his pumpkin. Supposedly the pumpkin gives him sweet dreams.

Although he is now 17 years old, he is still the perpetual kitten of our home and continues to make us laugh with his antics. Also, much to his chagrin, he gets smothered in hugs and kisses all the time, despite loudly claiming that “he is a grown-up boy who should NOT be hugged and kissed”.

Whether you read it today for the first time, or re-read it, I do hope you enjoyed the story, even though it is out of season.

Next time I look forward to sharing with you my adventures into the world of natural ink making.

Until then,
-Soma

P.S. I always get asked – the patterns are available in my shop.

I am linking up with the linky parties on my Events And Links page. Please pay a visit to some of them. They are a fabulous bunch! This month I am also joining Cheryl’s favourite finish and Em’s One Montly Goal.

Comments (44)

Wild Child

Charlie’s Adventure