processing Natural pigments

I have processed some of the pigments I’ve collected (see previous blog post) to make wax crayons.

First by grinding them down in a pestle and mortar.

Then sifting a couple of times to get as finer powder as possible. The grinding and sifting is an amazingly mindful process.

This powder/pigment can be used in its rawest form straight away, by just mixing with a little water. Someone had already use the raw pigment by the cliffs where I was collecting, because some of the rocks were saturated by the tide and the pigment was still wet. There is a further process to make the pigment dust finer which I may well refer to in a later post.

I used 50/50 of recycled waste candle wax with eco soya wax and mixed with some pigment to begin making my wax crayons and poured it into my silicone mould.

I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to make decent marks with them!

These are the crayons I’ve made so far with pigments as they were found. It is really very satisfying.

I must advise anybody who might be inspired, please collect rock/pigment that has fallen already, don’t collect direct from the cliffs.