Taken from the Flower Magic Branch Class
As soon as I saw this was one of the flowers to choose I knew I had to make ink. I've been wanting to make botanical inks for a good while now and this was the push I needed. Sourcing some dried petals online from a natural confetti small business I purchased their sample pack. This comprised a little packet of dark blue/purple petals. I kept some back to use in spellwork in future and put the rest to making the ink and craft for this lesson.
To make the ink I ground up my petals in a pestle and mortar before adding them to a jar and pouring a small amount of boiling water to it. I had looked up the method online previously. The jar was shaken vigorously and left on a sunny windowsill for 24 hrs. There are some improvements I could have made to this. For example using more petals, boiling the liquid for a little while to concentrate it or adding a mordant, a rusty nail for iron into the jar. After 24 hours I did have a purple ink which I strained through a coffee filter. I used the ink immediately, using my glass dip pen and you can see the colour of the ink on the little instruction card I wrote. I was intending to write my intention using the ink but later in the day the ink had deteriorated, fading in colour. I think the methodology needs more work or more practice. However, I used the ink to stain a little watercolour of some larkspur I had made. This gave it a purply grey watermark which I actually like. It seems to hold the energy of the flower well.
I deliberately sloshed it around to get as much of the actual larkspur essense onto the paper. Once completely dry, I wrote over the top in a purple ink my intention. I had read that larkspur was though to deter ghosts and I worked this to mean the ghosts of past trauma. I glued the final spell paper into my grimoire and added a little card pocket to store the recipe. I'm addicted to making little pockets and tucks in my grimoire at the moment. Because I felt more was needed I looked through my stash and found a botanical drawing of larkspur in my vintage-look papers. I cut this into a bookmark shape and over the picture placed a large strip of clear packing tape. Turning it over I sprinkled some petals and then added a further strip of tape. I burnished out the air pockets and wrinkles as much as possible before tidying up the edges, punching a hole for the ribbon. Whenever I need a little of larkspur's energy I can add the bookmark into whatever I'm reading.
