Tools and Ingredients to Make Lake Pigments at Home

Blog post: 
Tools and Ingredients to Make Lake Pigments at Home

At Boulder Colors, we love to share our process and hopefully inspire others to try making their own lake pigments. To make your own lake pigments from plants, you’ll need a few tools, many of which can be found in your own kitchen.

In this blog post, you will find a little overview of the tools you need to try making dyes and lake pigments:

• a few safety tips to start
• kitchen tools items you can use for lake pigments
• specialized watercolor paint making tools
• a few other nice to have tools

If you want to learn all the details, please check out our online course which includes a book and video demonstration.

Safety Tips
Protective gear

• I highly recommend wearing a mask to protect your lungs when working with powders like alum, washing soda, and lake pigments. 
• If your skin is sensitive, I recommend wearing gloves to protect your hands during the laking process in case of any spillage.

Dedicated tools

• As much as some tools are kitchen tools, I recommend you have dedicated tools for your lake pigments experiments. Don’t reuse them to make dinner after laking flowers. 

Tools and Ingredients
Kitchen tools to use for lake pigment making

• Large pot (and stove) to extract the dye
• Kitchen knife to cut your plant ingredients (optional, if necessary)
• Large spoon to agitate the dye
• Large bowl to contain the lake pigment, bowl should be 2-3x larger than the amount of dye to avoid spillage
• Small bowls or jars to mix you mordant and precipitator solutions
• Measuring spoons to make the mordant and precipitator solutions
• Measuring cups to help calculate the mordant and precipitator ratios
• Mesh hand strainer to strain the solids from the dye and hold the coffee filter in place (you can also use a large funnel to hold the filter in place but you will still need some sort of strainer for the dye)
• Coffee filters to strain the water from the pigment
• Mortar and pestle or coffee grinder to grind the pigment powder
• Dehydrator or oven to dry out the pigments (optional but highly recommended as these are organic pigments susceptible to mold)
• Extra fine mesh/tea strainer/flour sieve to separate out the larger pigment particles

A few tips to source kitchen tools for making lake pigments

• If you have doubles or old utensils, you can repurpose them into your own lake pigment making kit. They don’t need to be brand new.
• You can source these at a second hand store for much less (and it is good for the environment).
• Mason jars, repurposed glass jars from food you buy at the store and yogourt-like tall plastic containers can make for wonderful lake pigment vessels.

Watercolor paintmaking tools and ingredientsIf you intend to use the pigments to create watercolor paints, you will also need these tools:

• Hand blender to make the binder
• Glass muller to mix the paint
• Glass surface to mull on (I repurposed the glass from an old picture frame, but temporary substitutions include: plastic cutting board or large, flat plate)
• Palette knife (optional but recommended, batter scraper can work in a pinch)
• Paint containers (ex: bottle caps, watercolor pans, paint palettes, shallow dip bowls, acorn tops, etc)
• Gum arabic, which is the main ingredient in the binder of the paint

Ingredients for laking the pigments
You will need three things for making a lake pigment using most of the tools above:

• plant materials 
• alum, for making the mordant solution
• washing soda, for making the precipitator solution

Where to get ingredients for making lake pigments

• You can source plant materials where you are, whether in your kitchen (avocado peels, red cabbage, etc) or in your yard (flowers, barks, etc). .
• Alum can be found in some grocery stores, in the spices aisle. 
• Washing soda can be found in stores that sell natural products for making soaps and such. You can also make your own washing soda by baking baking soda in the oven on 400*F/200*C for half an hour.

Sourcing Supplies
The following shopping lists contain affiliate links and are provided to help you out to source your tools and ingredients. You are more than welcome to simply go to the supplier’s sites and not use these links.

Amazon
We all know Amazon. We hate to love it and we love to hate it, but sometimes, that is the best option for one stop shopping or the only option for those on a budget or living in remote areas. No shame here!

Mortar and Pestle: This one is big and heavy, but sturdy, easy to clean, and great for larger batches. A coffee grinder would work too, but I like having this one on hand for larger pigment chunks.

Measuring Spoons: I’m assuming that we all have the traditional sizes, but this small guy goes down to 1/64 tsp and sometimes you really need to be that exact when working with small amounts of pigment.

Mesh hand strainer: This is what I use for convenience and larger scale production, but you could really use any type of strainer and I’ve even seen people fasten coffee filters to jars with clothespins and forgo this entirely.

Sieve: No need to shell out the big bucks for lab grade equipment, this flour sieve is a great replacement for processing pigment particles.

Dehydrator: I would highly recommend investing in a quality dehydrator if you intend to make a lot of lake pigments or if you live in a really humid climate. This one is nice because it has a lot of shelves, no holes in the middle of those shelves, and a see-through cover so you don’t have to pause to check progress.

Better dehydrator: I’m not a fan of buying single appliances, so while this one is more expensive, it has all the same qualities as the above option but it can also be used as an oven and air-fryer.

Glass Muller: Some mica based pigments don’t need to be mulled but there’s no way around it with lake pigments. This one works fine, but I’d recommend buying a handmade on off Etsy if you can afford to.

Alum Powder: This one if you’re feeling ambitious, this one if you just want to test the waters.

Gum Arabic: This is the main ingredient in the watercolor binder.

Jackson’s Art Material
An art supplies retailer in the UK which has an amazing selection of art supplies and tools for the artists looking to make their own.

If you use the affiliate link in this blog post and it is your first order there, you will have 10% off your first order (make sure to register for your account when you are ready to make your purchase, clicking on the link here. If you create your account first and shop much later, it sometimes does not work). Almost everything paintmaking is available there, apart from the alum.

Watercolor paintmaking tools

• Glass muller
• Palette knives such as this or this
• Paint containers
• Gum arabic

Ingredients for laking the pigments

• washing soda (sold here in crystals)

Kama pigments
An art supplies retailer based in Montreal, Canada. They make a lot of their own range of paints and supplies, and they stock a lot of tools for the artist who likes to make their own.

Security materials

• Masks, gloves and everything you need

Kitchen tools to use for lake pigment making

• There are some wonderful plastic beakers to make you feel scientific! ;)

Nice to have kitchen tools

• Digital scale

Watercolor paintmaking tools

• Glass muller (you can also take a look at their paintmaking kit with everything)
• Palette knife such as this or this
• Paint containers like half pans
• Gum arabic
• A large range of empty containers

Ingredients for laking the pigments

• Plant materials and dye materials
• Alum
• Washing soda

Kremer
PigmentsAn art supplies retailer from Europe, with a shop in New York. If you are in the US, make sure you order from their New York shop. They stock mainly tools and pigments for the artist who likes to make their own supplies.

Kitchen tools to use for lake pigment making

• Mortar and pestle 

Watercolor paintmaking tools

• Glass muller
• Palette knife
• Paint containers like half pans
• Gum arabic

Ingredients for laking the pigments

• Plant materials and dye materials
• Alum​

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Special Thanks so @demigodette for help with this post. Using affiliate links costs you nothing but goes a long way to support us in providing free educational content.