Make Your Own Natural Watercolours!
- Words by Peppermint
Sustainable living advocate Rebecca Sullivan has made an art form of natural living, with books on everything from edible flowers to using herbs for health and wellbeing, as well as running a ‘Granny Skills’ program that brings communities of women together to preserve the culture, skills, knowledge and traditions of our elders. Here, she shares her very simple, very lovely method for creating natural dye that can be used as watercolour paint – let us know how you get on!
I firmly believe flowers are magical, and not just to look at – they give us flavour in cooking, marvellous smells in our homes and nourishing medicine when we’re ill. As if that wasn’t enough, their petals give us colour that lasts long after the flowers start to wilt – because instead of throwing ageing blooms into the compost, you can give them a second life by turning them into dye.
Natural dyeing is the process of drawing colour from natural sources such as plants, roots, berries, vegetables, bark, leaves and petals, and it’s taken place for thousands and thousands of years. There are lots of forms of dyeing using natural substances – but if you’re new to it all, the easiest place to start is solar dyeing. Simply by picking some of your favourite coloured flowers and harnessing the sun’s power, you can make dye in every colour of the rainbow! Then you can use the dye for everything from colouring your clothes to making non-toxic watercolour paints for your kids.
What you’ll need
Sunshine – choose a sunny spot in your home!
Jars with lids – ideally use ones leftover from your pantry.
Mordants – this fixes the colour. Here I’m using leftover white wine (if there is such a thing!)
Colour – this is where the flowers come in! Choose ones with colourful petals (white is a no-no!) – I love using irises, roses, marigolds, geraniums, gerberas and herb flowers, but you can basically use anything from your garden that releases liquid when squished.
Patience and a good shake!
Method
Have a wonderful time picking petals from your favourite plants. I’d suggest starting with a handful of each colour you want to create, always leaving enough behind for regeneration and wildlife. Shake any excess critters from the flowers before bringing them inside.
For every handful of flowers you’ll need a small jar (500ml is best) with a lid. Make sure it’s clean and dry.
Pick the petals from your flowers and place them into the jar, then top up with enough white wine to just cover the petals. Put the lid on and then pop it in your sunny spot.
For a couple of weeks, shake your jar and watch as the sun draws the colour from the petals. Leave for up to a month, then strain and use the liquid as a dye!
NOTE: This amount of dye is plenty for painting a few beautiful pictures, but it’s not enough to dye a substantial amount of clothing – think of it as more of a test run for you to see how it works and how much you can get from it.
WORDS AND PHOTOS: REBECCA SULLIVAN
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Look, I don’t want to make anyone panic but IT’S DECEMBER!!! If you’re planning to give homemade gifts, you’re going to have to act fast. …
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Raise those needles, folks – art and craft can change the world. 🧶
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As the world careens towards AI seeping into our feeds, finds and even friend-zones, it`s becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
We just wanted to say that here at Peppermint, we are choosing to not print or publish AI-generated art, photos, words, videos or content.
Merriam-Webster’s human editors chose `slop` as the 2025 Word of the Year – they define it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” The problem is, as AI increases in quality, it`s becoming more and more difficult to ascertain what`s real and what`s not.
Let`s be clear here, AI absolutely has its place in science, in climate modelling, in medical breakthroughs, in many places... but not in replacing the work of artists, writers and creatives.
Can we guarantee that everything we publish is AI-free? Honestly, not really. We know we are not using it to create content, but we are also relying on the artists, makers and contributors we work with, as well as our advertisers, to supply imagery, artwork or words created by humans. AI features are also creeping into programs and apps too, making it difficult to navigate. But we will do our best to avoid it and make a stand for the artists and creatives who have had their work stolen and used to train AI machines, and those who are now losing work as they are replaced by this energy-sapping, environment-destroying magic wand.
Could using it help our productivity and bottom line? Sure. And as a small business in a difficult landscape, that`s a hard one to turn down. We know other publishers who use AI to write stories, create recipes, produce photo shoots... but this one is important to us.
`Touch grass` was also a Merriam-Webster Word of the Year. We`ll happily stick with that as a theme, thanks very much. 🌿
