Painting is a favorite in my house at the moment and so are blackberries. Both of my kids went blackberry crazy this autumn. We had blackberry crumble most weekends and couldn't leave the house without them both asking for a quick handful of blackberries. You can imagine their horror when I told them that blackberry season was over. When I moved to this country I remember someone telling me of the
Old English Legend of the Devil and the Blackberries. I never paid too much attention to it but I have noticed that after mid October spiders to start to claim the brambles for their own. So, when mid October came I declared blackberry season over and told the children that the spiders were using the berries to lay their eggs. Lulu decided that she didn't mind eating spiders or spider eggs and has continued to enjoy the blackberries, everyone else is waiting for the 2013 harvest!
With so many berries left on the bushes I hated to let them all go to waste so decided to try and turn their dark juices into a paint.
I picked as many berries as I could and boiled them for about 15 minutes in just a small bit of water.
I then strained the boiled juice and added some cornflour to thicken the mixture and left it to cool.
When the children came back from school I gave them each a piece of white paper and a white crayon and asked them to draw a spooky picture.
We then used the blackberry paint to apply a thin wash to the paper and watched our spooky pictures appear like magic!
Here are the final results!
Incidentally, blackberry paint should probably be stored in the fridge if you intend to use it again.
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