Transcripts
1. Warm Welcome And Class Overview : You might not be familiar with the names of micas and oxides, but if you have won make up before or you've had
your Neil color done, then you're familiar with what they can do in terms of color. Hi, I'm Joy and welcome to
the calligraphy series. In today's class, we
are going to make inks from micas and oxides. And this is what we are
going to create together. I call this the color trio. We are going to
learn how to make white ink together
using titanium dioxide, black ink using black oxide. And who doesn't love
God using gold mica. Not only are we going
to create the inks, we're going to use them. I'll take you through
the process of how I use my goal ink Mica
with a pointed pen. Now the video serve to take
you through the process, but if you need specific
steps to refer to, I have these handier
printouts just for you. I hope that you find
these handouts useful. And I put them under the
Projects and Resources tab. That way you can print it
out and you can follow along the tutorials while
referring to these nodes. I know we're all excited to jump in and start
creating our inks, but first, a useful
introduction to Micas oxides.
2. Introduction To Creating Inks With Micas and Oxides: Here's a primer to
using micas and oxides to make calligraphy ink. What we're going to cover
for this section is a components of ink
getting started. What you need to know
about cleaning and safety. Then what are some of the common tools and
equipment that you will need, as well as the process
of creating the inks. What makes up ink? You need four components. You need the coloring agent. You need the carrier that's going to carry the
coloring agent. You also need something, all the things together, that's the binder, as
well as any additives. I'm going to break
it down for you, your coloring or
your filler agent, because some pigments
also contain fillers. If not, they're going
to be quite expensive. These are going
to be your Micas, your oxides, and your clay. I'm going to be explaining what Micas and oxides are in a bit, your carrier for your ink. It could be water or alcohol. In this particular case
that you'll be with me, we are going to be using water. The binder, it can be Shell. It can be gum Arabic. The reason why you
want to use either or is it has
different properties. Shell like, for example, is if you were to use it, it is something that is the
secretions of the lag insect. It's also natural and it
has different properties. It can make your ink waterproof. But I'm using gum Arabic and it comes from the
gum of the Acasia tree. When you're going
through this video, you may want to have the spirit of
experimentation because what I use could be different from what you have available in your own country. Please feel free to see and
adapt what you could do. Instead, let's get down and dirty with what
are Micas and oxides. Mic is actually a
naturally occurring stone. It's ground into powder, and then you get
your mica powder. Mic tends not to be opaque. The opaque pigments are
going to be your oxide. Micas tend to be a little
bit more translucent, so you can get the shimmery
effect with Micas oxides. In this particular class, we are looking also
at black oxides. Now some examples of
oxides are on oxide, which you can find
in a red color form, yellow, black, and brown. Now, these oxides are considered minerals because they are derived from the
oxidation of iron. But there's a little bit of controversy here when we
use the term natural. It's likely that even
though Micas and oxides do have its
natural forms, it is likely that what
you have in your hand, especially if you bought it
for personal care product, it will tend to be
created in the lab. The reason is because of safety. If it's something that
is naturally derived, it might have two high
levels of heavy metals. That's why if you
created in the lab, it's safer because
you can control these trace levels
of heavy metals. Some people do label micas
and oxides as natural. It is in the sense
that it is inorganic, but likely what you have in hand is probably going
to be synthetic. Now, once you have
these Micas and oxides and clays as filler, you also need a carrier. The carrier is used to carry
the coloring agents along. In this particular class, we're working with
the carrier of water. Then you need to put
everything together and we're going to
use a natural binder. This binder not only glues
everything together, but it also allows the
ink to be thicker. And for this class we're
working with gum Arabic. There is also that
element of additives. Like maybe you might want to layer oxides and micas together. You may think about getting creative with what
kind of additives you want to use for your
mica and oxide ink. The important thing is also
about cleaning and safety. When you're working
with powders, it can get into your lungs and that is something that
you don't want to have. Please wear a mask whenever
you have a natural product, you may want to
sterilize this in fact, or sanitize your equipment if you're keeping the
ink for some time. Do add preservatives. Some people use wintergreen oil, some people add a clove. These are just two of some natural sources
of preservatives. Before you make your
ink, of course, you need to gather your
tools and equipment here. I'd like to just share with you my own personal mantra of simplicity and using
what you have on hand. Now I'm someone who
is a serial hobbyist. I like so many different
hobbies and I can't possibly buy tools for every
single one of my hobbies. I make sure that
each tool will have a dual purpose and feel
free to improvise. Here are some tools and
equipment you will need when you're creating your
mica and oxide inks. To process your coloring agents, you need a funnel
and a glass moler. Now in this class, you also
see me using alternatives. I mean, it's ideal to
have a palette knife, but I have a scrapper,
so that's what I use. Now this is important. I did say you can
use dual purpose, but do not use containers that
you use for food, for ink. These things you
keep solely for ink, making your pop,
your large bowl and your glass containers
for storage or mixing. Now, if you want to track what is the recipe
that you're using, you probably need
measuring equipment. You need to measure your
powders, for example. And to do that, you
need a weighing scale. You may also need
beakers and droppers, especially when you're trying to mix your gum Arabic
into a solution. Of course, you need paper. You need paper for testing. You also need paper when
you're trying to use your homemade Mica oxide
based inks labels. You remember what
those inks were? I always like to
keep things simple when we are thinking
about the process of creating inks in C D.
What does ACD stand for? What is your coloring agent? Do you want to use
certain colors of Micas? Do you prefer to use
certain colors of oxides? Then what is your carrier? In this class, we're going
to use water filler. Sometimes I use filler
like in this class, I'm going to show you
how I use kaolin clay, but you might want to
use other fillers. Then in combining all the
different components, I'm using gum Arabic. Then the last stage
is to design. Think about how
you're going to get creative using
your homemade ink. Here's a snapshot of the
process of creating inks. Just remember to use
small quantities, especially if you're
first experimenting and starting out for these
classes that I show you, I always start with 1 gram of the oxide powder or
the micro powder. Then it's really just a
process of experimenting to see how much fillers you need and how much
binders that you need. Your aim is always to get the
consistency of heavy cream. Now we're going to get into the practical part
of it. Come join me.
3. Cleaning Your Tools: I have a more in depth video in an early class on
cleaning tools and what happens if you store
natural inks and dies out for too long
without a preservative. But let me emphasize
three actions you can take to sterilize or
disinfect your tools. One, clean your surfaces by rubbing it with
rubbing alcohol. Two, for glass and metal tools, you can submerge them in boiling water for
about 20 minutes. Three, if you have plastic, wash them with water
and detergent, At the very least you can spray rubbing
alcohol on plastic. I tend to avoid it because
I found that at times it turns the plastic and especially acrylic
materials cloudy. It's really important
that you do clean your tools because we are working with natural
ingredients. If you choose not to
add preservatives, make only the amount of dye that you need
for your project. That there is no need to
store the excess ink. Otherwise, you might have unwanted gas like
mold in your ink. I know it's gross. We're just going to
cut the visual now. This has been a public
service announcement. My friends clean your tools and if you're storing your
inks for a long time, use preservatives such as whole clothes or
winter green oil. Now let's get down to de making.
4. Preparing To Make Gold Mica Ink: Let's get our tools
and materials ready. We are going to
make our first ink together with the gold mica
as the coloring agent. Here I have a plain white tile that I can do my mixing on. What's important is
that it's a material that does not get stained
and is easy to clean. We have water in case we
need to thin out our ink. I have my ink binder, our gum Arabic solution, which is one part Gum
Arabic powder to two parts, water by volume and a dropper. Our coloring agent is gold Mica. We have measuring spoons as
well as a weighing scale. To mix our materials together, you can use a small
glass Muller. Alternatively, I'm
improvising here by using a beer glass with a thick flat base for small amounts of ink
like what we're making here. I just use a scrapper or
you can use a pallet knife. I don't usually do
large quantities of natural inks unless
I'm required to for, say, client work here
for demonstration. In this class, I'm
just going to show you a sample and we will use 1 gram. Creating inks are more
recipe than formula. If you don't have a wing scale and you need small amounts, you can just use
measuring spoons too.
5. Combine Stage: Creating Gold Mica Ink: After weighing out your
desired quantity of goal Mica, you can place them
onto your surface. For me, I prefer using
a flat rather than a curved surface because it's just easier to do my mixing. Next, we will add to the goal Mica Gum Arabic
solution drop by drop. The gum Arabic solution acts as a binder for the ink holt. Together, you can add the Gum
Arabic solution five drops at a time until you get to a
consistency of heavy cream, if it's still to powdery. At this stage, you can continue adding your gum Arabic solution. At the stage that you see here, it has already been 30 drops
of the gum Arabic solution, which means 1 gram of gold mica to 1.5 milliliter of the
gum Arabic solution. Note that different powders will have different absorbency. You really do need to do a sample for each
powder that you have. Now let's check how our inflows and I'm going to use
my rodeo paper pad.
6. Effects Of Gold Mica Ink on White And Black Paper: Take your pen with a
holder, take a push, dip it into a sample inc, and coat the back of
your pen with it. Let's try our Go Mica ink, add more ink when you
find it running out. Now let's see how
our gold Mica ink performs and how it appears
on a black background. I'm going to be using a test black paper that I will be using for the
inks that we created. I find it useful to help
the ink the floor by ever so often dipping just
the tip of my nip in the ink. Let's take a swap of
our gold Mica ink. This is what it looks
like on black background. We will let this dry
for about 10 minutes. Now that our gold
Mica Inc is dry, we can see what a beautiful, shimmery, opaque ink that it is. It shows up equally well
on a white background too. The ink doesn't sink
into the paper, it actually sits on
top of the paper. It's almost as if it
is gold embossed. Once the ink is dry, you can run your finger across
the ink and feel that it has this waste texture,
really beautiful.
7. Design: Ideas Using Gold Mica Ink: We are now at the
most exciting part, getting to design with
our handmade inks. The project we
have here is using our goal Mica ink on this card. I think adding our gold ink will go really lovely with
this yellow pattern. I have decanted my goal Mica
in into this Eppendorf tube. You may want to use any
container of your choice. I have used tracing paper as an overlay and you can
use vellum if you like. With our ink, I will write
a simple thank you message. Before I start doing
the calligraphy, I'll be taking this tracing
paper out because it will be so much easier to
write on when it's lying flat. What you see now is the tracing paper or if
you're using vellum. We have our Go Mica ink
in this Eppendorf tube, our pen nib in a pen holder
for our handmade inks, I'm really partial to using
the browse rose pen nib. I love that it has very flexible times which makes doing
calligraphy a breeze, especially when I'm using viscous inks like this one
that we created together. I also have a paint brush, which I will use to dip into my ink and then coat
the back of my pen nib. I have a non absorbent
paper here that I can place a drop of ink on
for more viscous inks. I like dipping the top of
my pen, nip in the ink, because my experience
is that it gets the ink flowing a lot
better when I write. Let's now play with our ink
and we can see how it behaves as I'm writing the alphabet H. I am putting slightly
more pressure on the paper so that more of
the ink flow onto the paper. Now, the thicker the ink paper, the slower it is to dry, but you get the raised texture that makes it seem
like it's embossed. The pressure you place on the pen dip times in
gets deposited on paper. Now that helps the
ink to dry faster, but you also get a
more flat texture once you make the ink, play around with it and see the effects that
you want to create. Now let's leave this tracing
paper and ink to dry. Once the ink has dried, I've placed the overlay
back onto the card. If you notice on the
stem of the H alphabet, the ink has this raised texture which we
talked about earlier. I hope you will enjoy
creating this beautiful, shimmery gold ink for mica. Next I will show you
how to create ink from black oxide and titanium dioxide to get a black and a cool, bright white ink, respectively.
8. Combine Stage: Creating Black Oxide Ink: Prepare everything that
you need, a scrapper, or you can use a
pellet knife to mix your ink gum Arabic solution. I show you how to make
a gum Arabic solution in my other calligraphic
botanical dice video. But this is used as
a binder, pen, nib, ready in a holder, a paintbrush. Our coloring agent,
in this case our black oxide water dropper, a rodia paper pad to
test how our ink flows. Let's go, if you're just starting out
making your own inks, start with a small
amount, like 1 gram. Now I'm going to be pouring
out my black oxide powder. It will create a matte,
opaque black ink. Now remember to have
your face mask on. Let's incorporate our
gum Arabic solution, which is a binder for our
ink by using a dropper. Just start with small amounts of about five to ten
drops at a time. Then use your palette
knife, or in my case, a scrapper, to mix the gum Arabic solution
with our coloring agent. This is to try to
get the solution of the ink to be
the consistency of heavy cream compared
to botanical powders. In my previous class, this black oxide powder is much more easily incorporated into
the gum Arabic solution. Just repeat the process with a little bit of Gum
Arabic at a time until you get the consistency that you think is suitable
for you to write with.
9. Testing Out Black Oxide Ink On Paper: Now it's time to see how
our black oxide ink flow. The back of your pen nib
with the ink that we made and let's test it
on our rodia paper pad. Let's see if we need to
make any adjustments. This ink flows pretty well. It's just that you need to dip the back of your pen
nib quite often. If you still find that the ink is too thick
for you to work with, you can always add
drops of water. But in this case I didn't
feel like I need to. There you go, our
black oxide in.
10. Combine Stage: Creating Titanium Dioxide Ink: The star for this class is
titanium dioxide powder. Start with small amounts. Measure out about 1 gram. We are going to add gum
Arabic solution to it, which is essentially a
mixture of one part of Gum Arabic powder to two
parts of water by volume. I also prepare my
pen nib in a holder. I am using my browse rose
pen nib to test this ink because it is a more viscous ink than our normal the base inks. Compared to say,
the nico G pen nib. The browse rose is
great for testing more viscous and thicker inks because the ties are
a lot more flexible. You can see how the tines
play much more easily. The ink flows better when
you're doing your calligraphy. Now let's get down
to ink making. We are using the dropper to add our gum Arabic solution
a little at a time, about five to ten drops. Then you are going to mix
it with your palette knife, or in my case, the scraper. You start with forming a paste. Okay, then you keep adding
your gum Arabic solution. And mix them all until you get a consistency
of heavy cream. Something that is easy to
do your calligraphy with. Make sure that there is no
trace of the powder left and all the titanium dioxide is incorporated into your
gum Arabic solution. If you're using titanium
dioxide powder, you can also use
white kline clay, which acts as a filler
to bulk up your ink, although you can
leave it as it is. So let's compare how
ink works when there is no filler and when we add the Klin clay using your pain brush coat the back of your pen nib with the
titanium dioxide ink. And I'll do a demonstration to show you how the ink flows. You can see that the titanium
dioxide ink on its own, without a filler,
creates a cool, bright white color ink. Now, what difference will adding kaolin clay as a filler make? We'll see in the next video.
11. Combine Stage: Bulking Up Titanium Dioxide Ink With A Kaolin Clay Filler: Here I have the line
clay which I will add to the titanium dioxide
ink that we created earlier. It's flexible how
much you want to add, but I would recommend
adding no more than 25% of your ink
quantity by volume. Now do know that there are different kinds of
kylin clay available. There is unrefined kylin clay, which is good for
your skin as a mask. But because it is unbleached, it's not so great
for creating inks width because they add a
dull shade to the cool, bright white color of our
titanium dioxide ink. You might ask why we need
to add the kline clay. As the term filler implies, it helps to bulk up our paint. It reduces the cost
of using the ink. If you find that
your ink is still too thick after adding
the kline clay, you can add water. Here, I have some water. I'll be taking my dropper and I'll add in drops of
water in small amounts. Only add water as needed until you get the consistency
of ink that you like. And now we try our ink coat the back of your
penny with your ink. And let's start a calligraphy time to compare because
we have selected Klin clay where its
color is quite similar. There's actually not much
of a color difference. It's worth noting that there are different
kinds of white. There's titanium white, which we have created
together here, which is a cool, bright white. But there's also other kinds
of white like Chinese white, which is pale and neutral with a bit of a Khaki undertone. Don't forget, I also provided handouts that
you can refer to.
12. Thank You And Your Class Project: I hope that the videos
before this is giving you many ideas about
what you can create. Here's our class project. It's about making your own
mica and oxide based ink. Here's what you do to also start experimenting with your own
mica or oxide based ink. One select a color of oxide
or mica that you like, then use the ACD process that
we went through together in the classes to create an ink with your
chosen mica or oxide, then snap a picture of your ink. Post your design where we
can all see it and like it. I'm really excited to see
what you guys come up with if you'd like to get other ideas on using
natural colors. I also have other classes
on creating natural dyes, as well as making natural inks with other coloring
agents such as flowers. If you'd like to
get in touch with me or have questions that
I can help you with, you can visit the discussion
section of this class. Or find me on Instagram
at Join Hands, and on my website at Join Hands.com I hope to see
you in another class.
Joy Tay, Maker
