Guys, I've experimented with mixing queen food colouring in great depth, here's my masterclass, thank me later. (If anyone is wanting to seriously mix their own food colouring, take my advice and buy TWO bottles of yellow, that goes real quick) 1. Plain blue is very nice by itself, but i personally prefer it slightly diluted 2. Plain green is kinda eh I wouldn't use it by itself, plain yellow is too bright 3. Plain red is also quite nice Mixing: note: the suggested ratios on the queen website don't always give nice colours when you're using them as INK, but some of them are acceptable and others may be acceptable if slightly diluted. However, diluting I feel sometimes causes feed issues so I add a bit of surfactant (read: detergent) to reduce surface tension, USE SPARINGLY, I typically dip a skewer into detergent and that makes enough difference in a shot glass of ink. If you add too much, you'll experience severe feathering. Someone also suggested to me to add glycerin (he read it somewhere on FPNetwork) and apparently it makes ink smoother? I personally don't notice much of a difference, but adding excess glycerin does slow down the dry time of the ink. Formulations: the green and purple in this video look *slightly* better diluted Aside from those already mentioned in this video; favourite greens- "emerald green": 2-3 parts blue to 1 part green "forest green": 1 red to 1 yellow to 7-8 parts blue favourite blues- just plain or diluted blue, OR if you're feeling like a pro chemist: a lot of blue with a tiny hint of yellow and slightly diluted (this was quite an interesting shading ink but I've yet to recreate the effect :\) for a true brown without diluting: 1 green to 1 red or a lighter bronze/copper like colour : 3 red to 2 green, alternatively, 5 yellow to 1 pink/red ( this is more on the dark golden side) for something that dries like a blue-black (I call this "petrol" cos that's what it looks like going on): 1 red to 1 blue AAAAND FINALLY, my greatest creations; I have two pens *permanently* loaded with these 1. "coral": (note: I also bought the queen pink food colouring, it writes magenta/wine coloured, so I'm not sure red would be an adequate substitude) 3 pink to 2 yellow and 2. "Apache Dusk" (Noodler's Apache Sunset knockoff ofc :))) ) typically 5 yellow to 1 red achieves a light orange yellow colour with fantastic shading, but if you want to make it look even more like noodlers you'd want to add a bit more yellow, and a small amount of pink if you can. Personally though, when I make this, I put about 16ml yellow, 3ml red, and a drop of pink in addition to glycerin and detergent. I find that the pink darkens the colour only slightly whilst increasing the variation in shading. That's all, folks! Feel free to tinker with these recipes and inform me of any improvements/suggestions, they would be much appreciated.
For the brown color you can use equal parts of red and yellow and add blue until you get the right shade. I used printer ink mixing equal parts of magenta and yellow and a few drops of black to the brown tone that interested me. At the moment I do not recommend using printer inks in fountain pens that you do not want to discard in the trash, I have not given problems so far but ...
I've been mixing my own black ink with food colouring for about half a year now, and it works and is quite handy as it is easier to store. I got the idea somewhere but your videos assured me it was safe. Recently I spilt my quink all over my desk, so I've grown a dislike towards such big bottles. I love black ink so it's a win-win. :) Greetings from your neighbour, NZ.
Fun! You got some really neat colours. Kudos for having the courage to try this in the first place. If you’d like brown, just add a very small drop of blue to your orange or flesh mix to darken them to brown. (If it veers towards green, just add a touch of the red to rebalance).
I bought a few food colouring bottles in the basic colours based on your last food colouring video and I've been playing around with mixes as well! The best thing about mixing orange is that it doesn't get crusty like normal orange inks do
Note that it very much depends on how wet your pen is. Some inks look awful in a dry pen but once you put them to a firehose they really shine, and vice versa. The "brown" seemed very close to Diamine's other ink - Graphite. Very dark pale green. And the purple is kinda like Diamine Damson. I kinda like it. Now excuse me, I'm going to haunt for some cheap artificial food colouring import because they're just not available in the EU. Only the washed-out natural ones. More expensive than ink and far too diluted to be usable.
By the way, I really enjoy your vids. I have never tried the yellow but the 'flesh & 'lime green' look great. There are six colours altogether, they also make a Rose Pink and I have bought it in a super market. I love the rose pink, very usable.
I've been doing this for years to. Adding water helps to soften the colours and make them lighter. I also use a lot of different brands some working better than others. It's fun to play around with as it DOES remind me of watercolour paint. I've also found it's a good idea that is you are adding a far bit of water use watercolour paper and even to sometimes wet the page first. The thing I always forget though: writing down how many drops I used for each colour LOL.
Queen do make a black, I have never seen it in a supermarket so I ordered it from them direct. It was $1 a bottle but $9 (I think) postage. I bought 4 bottles to make the postage worth while. While it is probably not the greatest black ink you will ever see, I really like it. It is almost a charcoal, no where near a severe as good black ink and very cheap. It flowed and performed flawlessly in the second pen I put it in, a Jinhao 599 extra fine nib. I am blaming poor quality control in the first pen (a Jinhao 599A medium) as the issue, not the food colour. Spend $12, you will never want for black usable ink for the rest of your life.
@@luke1991 No they don't if they are mixed properly. I've mixed many colours of ink, watercolour paints and other paints, using only red, blue and yellow inks and paints. Any artist will tell you this.
@@LifeinLancashire I am also an artist. You can actually mix the color red with magenta and yellow and the color blue with yellow and cyan. Try it next time you're mixing colors.
If anyone's interested, ~ 1 Green : 1 Red makes a better brown imo, more of a light brown. ~ 2 Blue : 2 Red : 1 Green made a darker brown. There may be some variation between brands, I used Foster Clark.
I love dark green! I don't know if the camera made it look nice, but it looked like a lovely color. Looks black, but with just enough green to add a touch of personality.
I didn't have any food colouring but I do have some koh I noor analinky paint and it really works! Thank you! I put mica in it as well and it's made shimmer ink.
Hey @JPL, would like to say that if you have a Fresh and Easy around you, you can get a whole soda sized bottle (around 20-24 oz) of food coloring for 2.5 USD. They come in around 6 colors as well, and they work just as well as the ones your using, but 20x cheaper. I neutralized mine with half a teaspoon of baking soda for every 1.75 oz, just due to how much acid there was in there compared to the other ones. (the other ones contain more "fillers" rather than citric acid as an ingredient, thus just as a safety precaution for my pen).
I have finally just tried this for the first time, mixing 5 vials of colouring to use for tests. I didn't note down the proportions as it is only a trial (also I have no blue so had to improvise) but it certainly looks promising. I'm using a cracked (grrr) Jinhao 992 that I don't mind throwing in the bin if it all goes west on me. Interesting days ahead.
With the orange, what about trying a mixture of between 3 and 6 yellow to one red? It might lighten up a good bit. Some ratio of straight red and green might make brown.
It is unfortunate that we don't have good food colouring in The Netherlands. We do have check stuff that kinda looks like very light Blue. We don't have Queen. I like that blue.
Depends on where you live. In Amsterdam, Wah Nam Hong the Chinese wholesaler has it in small and huge bottles. Try a Toko. I think there are online Toko's too.
Depends on where you live. In Amsterdam Wah Nam Hong the Chinese wholesaler has them in small and huge bottles. Otherwise try a Toko. I think there are online Toko's as well.
From my model building childhood i do remember that to get brown i used to mix red and green oil paints. I wonder if it's possible to attain the same result with food colouring.
I've gone this route after watching these videos and it's been working great. What are some good storage solutions that you've found? All my food coloring bottles are either 16 or 32 ounces, so I need something smaller to put them in, and easy to dip in.
I've been using a teal blue food coloring as ink in some of my pens. To date, I've had no problems. But has anyone ever heard of the food coloring forming a mold inside the pen? I'd heard some criticism of it because of this. To date, I've been rather lucky. No mold and a nice intense Teal Blue created by LorAnn. Has anyone tried diluting down Food coloring gel -- and can it be? And with what?
hi, this video in inspiring me so much. I have few question about food coloring. have you ever tried to mix this food coloring with a real fountain pen ink? and my second question is, I use a local food coloring ink, i think its too wet, how to make it drier, or thicker maybe? thanks.
@@jpl2475Excellent videos. I initially made a judgement thinking you were just a young guy with a female audience. I was wrong. Excellent video. I would really like it if you could do something similar with food colourings that are available to us in the 🇬🇧 UK. Thanks.
I just found a bottle of black food coloring at Walmart. I think something like 2 parts yellow, 1part red, and one part black might make a nice brown...if too dark, you could add more yellow. You got me thinking that a dip pen would be the perfect thing for testing these mixes. I would love to see you try a few other mix ratios!!!!! Think of all that extended fun!!!!!!!! 😎
Dip pens are generally pretty good with testing inks, but keep in mind that food colouring is quite runny and will not flow like proper dip pen inks, which are thicker
Nope. Source: i've had a piece of paper with food coloring outside my window for 5 months so it gets some 8 hours of sun a day (testing its UV durability) and no insect damage so far. I have ants everywhere as well.
@@franciscraig8164 well, after half a year it has faded considerably, i used black food colouring and i must say i can not recommend it. First of all, you do not get black, you get a washed out gray that looks almost exactly like pencil writing and the UV durability is not fantastic because its a dark colour, it has faded from pencil gray to yellowish green. It is still perfectly legible and it doesnt look like transparent, but the original colour is gone, i think that 6 months more and it will look transparent. I made a control sample to be kept inside a book in complete darkness in a cool area and it looks exactly the same as the day it was made. So yeah, its best to use this for lighter colours like a nice blue, green or red. They are far more resistant to light exposure and look really nice like on the video. Oh, and i had flow issues with mine which its to be expected, poke some liquid dishwasher with toothpick and mix it with the colouring, it helps a lot. Oh, and use this on bigger nibs, no point using it on fine nibs that are ink savers anyway, best to use it on your wettest nibs.
From my model building childhood i do remember that to get brown i used to mix red and green oil paints. I wonder if it's possible to attain the same result with food colouring.
Guys, I've experimented with mixing queen food colouring in great depth, here's my masterclass, thank me later.
(If anyone is wanting to seriously mix their own food colouring, take my advice and buy TWO bottles of yellow, that goes real quick)
1. Plain blue is very nice by itself, but i personally prefer it slightly diluted
2. Plain green is kinda eh I wouldn't use it by itself, plain yellow is too bright
3. Plain red is also quite nice
Mixing:
note: the suggested ratios on the queen website don't always give nice colours when you're using them as INK, but some of them are acceptable and others may be acceptable if slightly diluted. However, diluting I feel sometimes causes feed issues so I add a bit of surfactant (read: detergent) to reduce surface tension, USE SPARINGLY, I typically dip a skewer into detergent and that makes enough difference in a shot glass of ink. If you add too much, you'll experience severe feathering. Someone also suggested to me to add glycerin (he read it somewhere on FPNetwork) and apparently it makes ink smoother? I personally don't notice much of a difference, but adding excess glycerin does slow down the dry time of the ink.
Formulations:
the green and purple in this video look *slightly* better diluted
Aside from those already mentioned in this video;
favourite greens-
"emerald green": 2-3 parts blue to 1 part green
"forest green": 1 red to 1 yellow to 7-8 parts blue
favourite blues-
just plain or diluted blue, OR if you're feeling like a pro chemist:
a lot of blue with a tiny hint of yellow and slightly diluted (this was quite an interesting shading ink but I've yet to recreate the effect :\)
for a true brown without diluting: 1 green to 1 red
or a lighter bronze/copper like colour : 3 red to 2 green, alternatively, 5 yellow to 1 pink/red ( this is more on the dark golden side)
for something that dries like a blue-black (I call this "petrol" cos that's what it looks like going on): 1 red to 1 blue
AAAAND FINALLY, my greatest creations; I have two pens *permanently* loaded with these
1. "coral": (note: I also bought the queen pink food colouring, it writes magenta/wine coloured, so I'm not sure red would be an adequate substitude) 3 pink to 2 yellow
and 2. "Apache Dusk" (Noodler's Apache Sunset knockoff ofc :))) )
typically 5 yellow to 1 red achieves a light orange yellow colour with fantastic shading, but if you want to make it look even more like noodlers you'd want to add a bit more yellow, and a small amount of pink if you can. Personally though, when I make this, I put about 16ml yellow, 3ml red, and a drop of pink in addition to glycerin and detergent. I find that the pink darkens the colour only slightly whilst increasing the variation in shading.
That's all, folks! Feel free to tinker with these recipes and inform me of any improvements/suggestions, they would be much appreciated.
you recommend distilled water? and how about water wetter for radiators as something that breaks water tension?
‘
For the brown color you can use equal parts of red and yellow and add blue until you get the right shade. I used printer ink mixing equal parts of magenta and yellow and a few drops of black to the brown tone that interested me. At the moment I do not recommend using printer inks in fountain pens that you do not want to discard in the trash, I have not given problems so far but ...
I've been mixing my own black ink with food colouring for about half a year now, and it works and is quite handy as it is easier to store. I got the idea somewhere but your videos assured me it was safe. Recently I spilt my quink all over my desk, so I've grown a dislike towards such big bottles. I love black ink so it's a win-win. :) Greetings from your neighbour, NZ.
a good brown is 2 parts red and green, and 1 part yellow. really a brown gold
Fun! You got some really neat colours. Kudos for having the courage to try this in the first place. If you’d like brown, just add a very small drop of blue to your orange or flesh mix to darken them to brown. (If it veers towards green, just add a touch of the red to rebalance).
I bought a few food colouring bottles in the basic colours based on your last food colouring video and I've been playing around with mixes as well! The best thing about mixing orange is that it doesn't get crusty like normal orange inks do
Note that it very much depends on how wet your pen is. Some inks look awful in a dry pen but once you put them to a firehose they really shine, and vice versa.
The "brown" seemed very close to Diamine's other ink - Graphite. Very dark pale green. And the purple is kinda like Diamine Damson. I kinda like it.
Now excuse me, I'm going to haunt for some cheap artificial food colouring import because they're just not available in the EU. Only the washed-out natural ones. More expensive than ink and far too diluted to be usable.
Awesome video! The orange reminds me of Noodlers Habanero.
AND!!! You reminds me of Bizet's piece called Habanera.
You're crazy lol
I'm going to try this
Those greens look great!
By the way, I really enjoy your vids. I have never tried the yellow but the 'flesh & 'lime green' look great. There are six colours altogether, they also make a Rose Pink and I have bought it in a super market. I love the rose pink, very usable.
I've been doing this for years to. Adding water helps to soften the colours and make them lighter. I also use a lot of different brands some working better than others. It's fun to play around with as it DOES remind me of watercolour paint. I've also found it's a good idea that is you are adding a far bit of water use watercolour paper and even to sometimes wet the page first. The thing I always forget though: writing down how many drops I used for each colour LOL.
you should try mixing dark red with a little little little bit of black. i got a brown color on my mine and it looks wonders
Made your concoctions, I love the flesh and dark green. Looking forward to more mixes on your channel
Queen do make a black, I have never seen it in a supermarket so I ordered it from them direct. It was $1 a bottle but $9 (I think) postage. I bought 4 bottles to make the postage worth while. While it is probably not the greatest black ink you will ever see, I really like it. It is almost a charcoal, no where near a severe as good black ink and very cheap. It flowed and performed flawlessly in the second pen I put it in, a Jinhao 599 extra fine nib. I am blaming poor quality control in the first pen (a Jinhao 599A medium) as the issue, not the food colour. Spend $12, you will never want for black usable ink for the rest of your life.
You only need the 3 primary colours (red, yellow and blue) to mix a load of colours. Have a look at the colour wheel to see what colours to mix.
Yeah, well the point of this was to mostly stick to the guide on the packaging, im useless at mixing ink so that's all I had to go off :)
Red, yellow, and blue make dark muddy colors. For optimal mixing you'll actually want magenta, yellow, and cyan.
@@luke1991 No they don't if they are mixed properly. I've mixed many colours of ink, watercolour paints and other paints, using only red, blue and yellow inks and paints. Any artist will tell you this.
@@LifeinLancashire I am also an artist. You can actually mix the color red with magenta and yellow and the color blue with yellow and cyan. Try it next time you're mixing colors.
I am so GRATEFUL you made this video!!! I'm definitely going to use food coloring I like that it's not toxic too 😁
If anyone's interested, ~ 1 Green : 1 Red makes a better brown imo, more of a light brown. ~ 2 Blue : 2 Red : 1 Green made a darker brown.
There may be some variation between brands, I used Foster Clark.
I like your hand writing.
0.3 fluid oz yellow + .5 montblanc mistery Black international refill makes an amazing 😍 beautiful golden ink
I love dark green! I don't know if the camera made it look nice, but it looked like a lovely color. Looks black, but with just enough green to add a touch of personality.
I like purple ink, and I think the one you made looked great.
Have you ever compared the three Lamy Joy sizes? Love your videos.
I didn't have any food colouring but I do have some koh I noor analinky paint and it really works! Thank you! I put mica in it as well and it's made shimmer ink.
Hey @JPL, would like to say that if you have a Fresh and Easy around you, you can get a whole soda sized bottle (around 20-24 oz) of food coloring for 2.5 USD. They come in around 6 colors as well, and they work just as well as the ones your using, but 20x cheaper. I neutralized mine with half a teaspoon of baking soda for every 1.75 oz, just due to how much acid there was in there compared to the other ones. (the other ones contain more "fillers" rather than citric acid as an ingredient, thus just as a safety precaution for my pen).
I love the flesh colour in that it the first time I saw it I nearly screamed "That's tangerine!"
What is the ratio to water? Do you add alcohol? Can these be used for ink pads for stamping? Thanks, interesting video!
I have finally just tried this for the first time, mixing 5 vials of colouring to use for tests. I didn't note down the proportions as it is only a trial (also I have no blue so had to improvise) but it certainly looks promising. I'm using a cracked (grrr) Jinhao 992 that I don't mind throwing in the bin if it all goes west on me. Interesting days ahead.
I got the blue and green in the supermarket tonight ... thanks for the info mate :)
Thanks, I love lime green so I'll try
worth a try :)
you can always change the ratio. The instructions are just a base color.
With the orange, what about trying a mixture of between 3 and 6 yellow to one red? It might lighten up a good bit. Some ratio of straight red and green might make brown.
Did you add water?
How does ink comes out so nicely with your pens?, Is it because of the ink or the pen?, If it is the ink then please guide me with ink?
You can try adding water to dilute the purple ink
next part of this vid would be "testing food color brands"
It is unfortunate that we don't have good food colouring in The Netherlands. We do have check stuff that kinda looks like very light Blue. We don't have Queen. I like that blue.
Depends on where you live. In Amsterdam, Wah Nam Hong the Chinese wholesaler has it in small and huge bottles. Try a Toko. I think there are online Toko's too.
Depends on where you live. In Amsterdam Wah Nam Hong the Chinese wholesaler has them in small and huge bottles. Otherwise try a Toko. I think there are online Toko's as well.
In a Chinese toko you can find great food coloring
And also in places where they sell cake supplies
perhaps you could find a way to dilute gel food coloring to use?
Very interesting. Does it fade over time? How about UV resistance?
I got good results with aqua when I mixed 2 green : 3 blue.
Guy ! Aqua pops well with extra fine and fine nibs for some reason...
Really helpful video - thank you!
Ive been thinkin of trying to do this for years, I'm gonna try it this week lol
Interesting experiment.
How do you find the viscosity and lubricity of the food-colouring ink, please?
From my model building childhood i do remember that to get brown i used to mix red and green oil paints. I wonder if it's possible to attain the same result with food colouring.
Great tips. Thanks for sharing.
They make all kinds of colors now for food coloring so you dont have to mix them as much any more.
and now I have to go back and get all the other colours :)
The aqua color is called Jade
Hi I would like to ask if it's water proof when put on paper?
I've gone this route after watching these videos and it's been working great. What are some good storage solutions that you've found? All my food coloring bottles are either 16 or 32 ounces, so I need something smaller to put them in, and easy to dip in.
Theres a pink food dye from queen. Have you tried that?????
colors: green, red, orange, *flesh* , blue, yellow
I've been using a teal blue food coloring as ink in some of my pens. To date, I've had no problems. But has anyone ever heard of the food coloring forming a mold inside the pen? I'd heard some criticism of it because of this. To date, I've been rather lucky. No mold and a nice intense Teal Blue created by LorAnn. Has anyone tried diluting down Food coloring gel -- and can it be? And with what?
Love yo vids
Do you use gel food coloring or water based food coloring?
The ones he used is water based. Theyre by a brand called queens.
Can you use a bit of glycerine as grease?
what blending solutions would work with these diy
inks?
For some reason youtube forgot to let me know about this vid.
hi, this video in inspiring me so much.
I have few question about food coloring.
have you ever tried to mix this food coloring with a real fountain pen ink?
and my second question is, I use a local food coloring ink, i think its too wet, how to make it drier, or thicker maybe?
thanks.
You could add bicarbonate of soda. This would also alkalise the mix (make it less acidic, less corrosive).
Thanks for lot
Make turquoise!
Well s**t, I've gotta try this!
Does it smell delicious?
While I like your videos I feel like you need an outro. The videos always feel like they're ending abruptly.
PanDeBer same
I think you should make more videos about this ...
I made a one year update a while ago about this topic
@@jpl2475 i watched that too...
@@jpl2475Excellent videos. I initially made a judgement thinking you were just a young guy with a female audience. I was wrong. Excellent video.
I would really like it if you could do something similar with food colourings that are available to us in the 🇬🇧 UK. Thanks.
I'm going to go to asda today and I will buy food coloring for my fountain pen
So, you dont need to pay attention to the expiry date?
I haven't had any issues so far
the first color he uses YELLOW
How do you make these waterproof?
You don't. Waterproof ink is made from dyes with specific bonding properties.
@@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart or Pigments
I just found a bottle of black food coloring at Walmart. I think something like 2 parts yellow, 1part red, and one part black might make a nice brown...if too dark, you could add more yellow. You got me thinking that a dip pen would be the perfect thing for testing these mixes. I would love to see you try a few other mix ratios!!!!! Think of all that extended fun!!!!!!!! 😎
Dip pens are generally pretty good with testing inks, but keep in mind that food colouring is quite runny and will not flow like proper dip pen inks, which are thicker
@@HumblyDumbly I did not know that...! 😁
4:24 I though you were going to put a date
Probably wrong proportions.
Good for baking a cake, but not for paper.
This is very interesting
What is the water amount
Pen in the video?
If m correct... The pen is Parker Sonnet
Yeah it is a sonnet, medium nib
That's one beautiful pen
can use t for prnter pls try ths
I want order
I'm looking for a nicely behaving, nicely coloured black. What colours to mix? Lol
L like this video
Okay I have a stupid question... Do ants come at food colouring?
Nope. Source: i've had a piece of paper with food coloring outside my window for 5 months so it gets some 8 hours of sun a day (testing its UV durability) and no insect damage so far. I have ants everywhere as well.
@@Mylity66 Thank you very much!
@@Mylity66 how's the UV durability test btw?
@@franciscraig8164 well, after half a year it has faded considerably, i used black food colouring and i must say i can not recommend it. First of all, you do not get black, you get a washed out gray that looks almost exactly like pencil writing and the UV durability is not fantastic because its a dark colour, it has faded from pencil gray to yellowish green.
It is still perfectly legible and it doesnt look like transparent, but the original colour is gone, i think that 6 months more and it will look transparent. I made a control sample to be kept inside a book in complete darkness in a cool area and it looks exactly the same as the day it was made.
So yeah, its best to use this for lighter colours like a nice blue, green or red. They are far more resistant to light exposure and look really nice like on the video.
Oh, and i had flow issues with mine which its to be expected, poke some liquid dishwasher with toothpick and mix it with the colouring, it helps a lot. Oh, and use this on bigger nibs, no point using it on fine nibs that are ink savers anyway, best to use it on your wettest nibs.
@@Mylity66 I never expect such in-depth response. Thank you so much for the info. :)
I guess I have to test my couple of black and blue inks.
From my model building childhood i do remember that to get brown i used to mix red and green oil paints. I wonder if it's possible to attain the same result with food colouring.