If you've got turmeric, paprika, a few tea bags, and some leftover red cabbage in your kitchen, you already have most of what you need to make a small collection of natural inks for paper crafting, collage, and junk journaling. This video walks through six ingredient-based inks — turmeric, black tea, paprika, coffee, cranberry tea, and red cabbage — and then shows them in action across about ten different projects, from painted watercolor paper to dyed lace, muslin, doilies, and embossed paper.
What we cover
Six natural ink recipes made from kitchen ingredients, plus how to use them across a range of paper craft and collage projects — including painted backgrounds, coffee-stain effects, edge inking, dyeing lace and fabric, and working on embossed paper. The video shows both the making and the using, so you come away with a full picture of what these inks can actually do.
What you'll learn
How to make six natural inks from kitchen ingredients, each with its own character and color:
- Turmeric — simmered with water and strained through gauze for a clear yellow wash
- Black tea — steeped from five bags in a cup of boiling water, no straining needed
- Paprika — same process as turmeric, simmered and strained to remove the paste
- Coffee — instant coffee dissolved in hot water, straightforward and strong
- Cranberry tea — steeped like black tea, but produces a deep blue-purple rather than the red you'd expect
- Red cabbage — a few leaves chopped and simmered, giving a beautiful purple that shifts toward blue on paper
Why straining matters for paste-based inks — turmeric and paprika both leave behind a thick paste that will clog your brush and sit unevenly on paper. Running the solution through gauze takes thirty seconds and makes all the difference.
How to paint ripped watercolor paper for a faux handmade look — applying each ink individually to torn pieces creates papers that read as handmade, especially once the edges are inked. These become ready-to-use collage elements or filler pages.
How wet-on-wet versus wet-on-dry changes the result — applying splotches or second colors while the paper is still wet gives soft, blended, almost watercolor edges. Applying after the paper has dried gives darker, more defined marks. Both approaches appear in the video and the difference is obvious.
How to use salt on wet ink-painted paper for texture — scattering salt while the paper is wet and removing it once dry creates a textured surface with an almost embedded grain. The effect works best with alcohol inks, but with natural inks it still produces something worth keeping.
The mug-ring technique for aged, layered paper — using pot lids and small containers to stamp ink circles across paper, mimicking old coffee and tea stains. Inking the edges and adding splashed splotches pushes the aged feeling further.
How to build a collage using natural ink papers — layering ripped book pages, inking their edges, adding coffee-stain marks, and finishing with ephemera like paper flowers, faux postage stamps, and see-through stickers. The process in the video is shown improvisationally, which is part of the point — these papers invite that kind of intuitive building.
How to dye white lace with natural inks, including:
- A quick dip for subtle, barely-there color
- A longer soak for more saturated, even coverage
How to dye muslin and fabric scraps — the same solutions that work on paper work on fabric, and the results are usable in journal covers, clusters, and mixed-media work.
How to paint embossed paper with natural inks — saturating embossed paper brings the texture forward dramatically. The red cabbage ink in particular comes up a vivid blue against the raised pattern.
How to dye paper doilies cut from an old tablecloth — the variation in material thickness across a doily means the ink takes unevenly, producing a range of tones within a single piece. The video shows mixing and matching colors across several doilies.
Mixing the inks for new colors — combining solutions produces colors none of the individual inks make on their own. The green that comes from mixing is a good example: nothing in the base set of six is green, but a simple combination gets you there.
Tips & gotchas
Make small batches and plan to use them up within a few days. These are water-based solutions — coffee, tea, red cabbage, all of them — and they'll go bad if left out. Keeping them in the fridge buys you a bit more time; freezing them buys more. If you add vinegar and salt to a batch you want to keep longer, it acts as a mild preservative, but it's easier to just make fresh.
Strain turmeric and paprika through gauze before using them. Both produce a thick paste when simmered, and that paste will sit on your paper rather than absorbing into it. A quick strain gives you a clean solution.
If you want to reduce the acidity of a coffee solution — especially if you're using it on delicate paper or fabric — a small amount of baking soda in the mix will help.
The wet-versus-dry timing really does matter. If you want colors to bleed and blend together, add your second layer while the first is still wet. If you want crisp, dark marks — the kind that look like genuine old stains — let the paper dry completely first. Both are shown in the video and the difference is significant enough that it's worth experimenting deliberately rather than just letting things happen.
Salt on wet ink-painted paper creates an embedded texture, but it works better with alcohol inks than with these water-based solutions. It still produces something interesting — just don't expect the dramatic pull you'd get from an alcohol-based pigment.
For lace and fabric, the timing of the soak determines everything. A brief dip gives a light, delicate tinge; soaking overnight gives deep, even saturation. Neither is better — they just suit different projects.
What I found was that making the inks is the easy half-hour; the ideas that come after are what take the time. And as Natasa notes, the amounts she used across all ten projects barely made a dent in her jars, so a small batch really does go a long way.
