Hello, 2018.5! ? Starting the second half of the year with church and family time, self-care Sunday (naksss!), and an inky evening. I’ve been meaning to create a line of calligraphy and drawing inks for a while now. Took some time to source all the ingredients that I needed. After doing a lot of research on traditional ink recipes (some dating back to the 4th century!), I finally created my first batch of ink!
Gallnuts from oak trees, iron sulfate, gum arabic are the main ingredients for iron gall ink. The dark nibs in the measuring cup are walnut shells to make walnut ink.
Iron gall ink was used in the early 20th century to write important documents because the ink is archival quality. Since iron is one of the main ingredients of the ink, iron gall can corrode metal/steel parts of the pen. It’s not recommended for fountain pen use (back in the day, they made their own writing materials from quills!), but can be used with dipping nibs made of steel or glass. Aside from being archival and waterproof, iron gall ink creates the finest hairlines allowing you to write smaller sized letters, and create high contrast for modern calligraphy.
The iron gall ink is amazing–it starts out as purplish gray, and then it gradually turns darker and settles into a purplish-black. I’m so in love with these colors!
The walnut ink is a beautiful sepia tone.
Created labels for the ink and housed them in glass bottles with droppers.
Sent them out to calligraphers Fozzy and Richelle to try out!
Calligraphy by @oceanchelle
Calligraphy by @thefozzybook
@stephlovestowrite and @nalsanchez were among the first to purchase the ink from my pop-ups!
The Handmade Iron Gall Ink is now available at all Common Room branches: Alabang Town Center, Rockwell, and Katipunan, at P520 per bottle. For orders of 10+ bottles, e-mail me at hello@lifeafterbreakfast.ph 🙂