Blueberry Ink

July 30, 2014

I finally got around to trying the cooked-down blueberry ink, which turned out way better than just trying to juice it without cooking. Many thanks to the Druid's Garden blog for the instructions. Be sure to check it out. Here are some writing samples alongside my uncooked pokeberry juice ink. Over time, we'll see how it ages in the bottle and on the page...

The blueberry ink goes down pink but then oxidizes to blue as it dries. I didn't use any gum arabic. It oxidizes a lot slower on 100% cotton paper than on sugarcane paper. It's also rather slow to dry.

Sample written with a Coit dip pen:

Sample written with MusinkMan's oblique flex dip pen:

Samples written with a glass pen:

Edited July 30, 2014 by fiberdrunk

July 30, 2014

That's AWESOME!!!!... Now I feel like I need to get me some blueberries and pokeberries.. YUM!!!

July 30, 2014

That's AWESOME!!!!... Now I feel like I need to get me some blueberries and pokeberries.. YUM!!!

This was a fun ink, and it's super easy. Anyone can be an inkmaker with this one!

Edited July 30, 2014 by fiberdrunk

July 30, 2014

Thank you for this review. It is a very beautiful ink.

July 30, 2014

lovely!!!

July 30, 2014

I'm curious if this ink oxidizes either on the paper or in the pen after a while. Could you please do a follow-up post to satisfy the Chemistry teacher in me?

July 30, 2014

I'm curious if this ink oxidizes either on the paper or in the pen after a while. Could you please do a follow-up post to satisfy the Chemistry teacher in me?

Well, I didn't put this stuff in a fountain pen. It's got vinegar, so it might be too acidic. I can tell you that on 100% cotton paper that my samples from yesterday still have not turned blue. It's gone from a pink to a light purple so far. On sugarcane paper it turned blue as it dried, within several seconds. I'll let you know how much the color continues to shift on both papers.

Edited July 30, 2014 by fiberdrunk

July 10, 2020

I'm curious if this ink oxidizes either on the paper or in the pen after a while. Could you please do a follow-up post to satisfy the Chemistry teacher in me?

I don't know how I missed this. Sorry for the very long delay. I went through my ink sample files and scanned in this old blueberry ink sample. There has been quite a bit of fading but I was surprised at how well it actually held up for 6 years! The sample has been kept in the pages of my ink journal (acid-free pages) in a cool room.

It's been a long time since I've posted on FPN and I can't seem to get the Flickr photo to appear here (I keep getting the error message "Image Extension is not allowed"), and I couldn't get it to work in the FPN Upload tab either, even though the file was less than 1 MB and in the proper jpeg format. It wouldn't even let me include the link here. So I'll just refer you to my Flickr ink photo album and hope you can scroll through and find it..

But just to say what happened, without the photo here, there was quite a bit of fading, but I was surprised by how much was retained after 6 years, especially for a berry ink.

Edited July 10, 2020 by fiberdrunk