# All Natural Homemade Body Paint From Found Pigment



## faerytech (Jul 17, 2016)

Hi ya'll! I'm Maddy. 
Pretty recently, I had a friend come to me asking me to make him all natural body paints. 
He specifically wanted blue, green, yellow, red, and black. I decided to make him the primary colors and black, and leave it at that!
I was very enthusiastic at first, and then... Oh gosh! 
Well, it turns out that it's nearly impossible to turn a liquid dye into a body paint, since it majorly dilutes the color and doesn't mix well with the oils. 
You can, however, create a pigment by dehydrating organic material (Like berries or petals) and finely grinding them (Don't I wish I had a mortar and pestle now!???)

It also turns out that although I can make a BEAUTIFUL blue liquid dye with red cabbage, that making blue with almost anything else is nearly impossible. That darn color! (Even now I can still smell the horrible stench of dehydrated cabbage leaves)
Blue is the rarest color. Almost any other color can be easily made from organic materials, such as berries or grass or dirt. But blue... Well, it's tricky. 
The ancient Egyptians used a complicated chemical process involving copper and heating to create their blue.
In the Renaissance period, they used ground lapis lazuli, a precious gem, to create blue!
Is purple really the color of royalty, or is it blue? 
Really the only things that make blue are Iris leaves (which are not found in my locality and are decently expensive flowers) or woad (which is poisonous!)

Has anyone here tried to make body paints? I really want to create a high quality paint with beeswax (to make it thick and waterproof). If I can do this, I feel it will be absolutely amazing, because none of the recipes I found came at all from natural ingredients, or else were not high quality!


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## dixiedragon (Jul 17, 2016)

Indigo powder? https://www.brambleberry.com/Natural-Colorants-Sampler-Pack-P6481.aspx

Brambleberry also has Brazilian clays that come in different colors.


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## faerytech (Jul 17, 2016)

Ah, well, that wouldn't count for what he wanted, haha. He was very specific in that he wanted something made totally from scratch and found materials. He's using it for rituals, who am I to judge? So that's what I'm basing it off of. Perhaps it was indigo leaves I was thinking of... in fact that sounds much more like it. Regardless, I have yet to find them in my area and have been considering ordering them online. Thanks for the suggestion regardless!


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## snappyllama (Jul 17, 2016)

I'm not sure where you're at, but the south has dewberries. Those always stained my fingers bluish-purple when I would go picking them as a kid.


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## TheDragonGirl (Jul 17, 2016)

if you're ordering things online, ground lapis lazuli is actually available as ultramarine blue, its lab grown crystals unless you go for the 'natural' version which is much more expensive.


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## faerytech (Jul 17, 2016)

TheDragonGirl said:


> if you're ordering things online, ground lapis lazuli is actually available as ultramarine blue, its lab grown crystals unless you go for the 'natural' version which is much more expensive.



Oh gosh, that makes me think about the possibility of growing crystals myself and using them for pigments, I've always wanted a crystal garden, haha!


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## Arimara (Jul 17, 2016)

Making body paint sounds fun enough but I personally won't try it. My family is good for skin issues and I'd prefer not to risk it.


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