Hi Everyone.
Over the past couple of days I have been making walnut ink. Why? I hear you ask (or not). I have taken up interest in Calligraphy again and whilst searching the web for online courses I came across a recipe for homemade walnut ink. Since I have an abundance of walnuts, courtesy of the neighbours tree over hanging our garden, I thought I’d give it a go. The recipe didn’t look too hard to follow. Just a bit long winded in making the stuff. My walnuts are English walnuts and not black walnuts as the recipe calls for. Here is the link for the recipe. http://www.marktablerart.com/5.html and here are my results.

A large jam making pan for the walnuts.
it didn’t stain it when finished and scrubbed up clean.

From this large pan of liquid I acquired just over a litre of ink.
After several hours of boiling I did reduce the strained liquid in my cast iron pan so that the ink darkened further. I didn’t take a photo of that.

I added to the ink 5% of cheap vodka as a preservative.
That was 5% of 1100ml ink = 55ml of vodka.

The writing results, not bad (still need a lot of practice on my calligraphy).
This stuff costs £8.36 for a 2.6oz bottle on Amazon UK and $7.99 in the USA. Why is it that you guys get cheaper stuff than we do. Huff! not fair.