This recipe is a result of experimentation informed by the book Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking by Jason Logan.
While I myself am not a smoker, my partner occasionally smokes and often rolls his own cigars using tobacco leaves. I recently got it in my head after reading Jason Logan’s book Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking that I would try to turn the leftover tobacco into natural ink. I’ve got to say, the result ended up better than I expected and was remarkably easy. It takes some time to get a final product since the mixture needs to simmer but there’s almost no hands-on time whatsoever.
Be sure when you go to bottle your inks after making them to use bottles which have been pretty thoroughly sterilized. This will help your inks to last longer and not develop any gnarly mold if they sit in a cupboard for too long.
Tobacco Dye
Ingredients
- 2 cups water (distilled preferred)
- 1 cup tobacco leaves
- 2 tbsp vinegar
- 1 tbsp salt
- 30 drops gum arabic
- 2 drops wintergreen oil
Equipment
- pot
- spoon
- sieve
- coffee filter
Instructions
- Combine tobacco leaves and water in a pot.
- Add the vinegar and salt.
- Heat to just below boiling and simmer for at least 2 hours. Stir occasionally.
- When mixture gets to your desired color (you can test this by dipping paper into the pot) remove from heat and let cool.
- Into a heat resistant container (I use an old Chemex) place a coffee filter into the funnel and filter the ink solution. You may need to sieve the mixture first if you have particularly large plant matter.
- Add gum arabic: For each 60 mL of ink, use roughly 10 drops of gum arabic. Add more for a viscous solution and less for a more fluid solution.
- To preserve mixture, add a few drops of wintergreen oil into each container.