Homemade Litmus Strip Art Weaving

Litmus paper must turn some of the nicest colors I've ever seen.  The following project will not only teach you how to salvage those little strips for use in an art project--it will teach you how to make your own litmus paper completely from scratch!

Materials:
One cup red cabbage
Blender or Food Processor
Nylon knee high/piece of pantyhose (an old sock will also work)
Knife
Cutting Board
Glass bowl
Paper Strips (you'll want to use acid-free paper, such as scrapbooking or bookbinding paper)
Basting Brush or Paint Brush
Tape
Board or Piece of Cardboard

Step 1 Preparing Cabbage

1) Begin by chopping up the red cabbage into small bits.   I used a kitchen knife and a cutting board.  You may want to ask an adult for help.

Comments

[TheJoshinator]

Nice instructable! I like that you added the weaving part, getting artsy with a gradeschool science experiment.

Just as a quick note, you can get more usable juice from less cabbage by putting the blended cabbage concoction (before filtering the chunks out) in a bowl and microwaving it for a minute, covered of course, or boiling it on a stove. This pulls much more of the pH-reactive chemicals out of the leaves and into the water without altering their chemical composition. Then you can add more water to dilute to your desired color and you've gotten more bang for your buck. You could probably even re-boil the cabbage mush to get more colored water out of it!

[thepelton]

I thought the only use for purple cabbage was coleslaw.  I have learned something today.

[ChrysN]

Pretty colours, I've heard that you can use red cabbage to test ph but didn't know how to prepare it.