Stain Your Wood Purple Using Red Cabbage

Intro: Stain Your Wood Purple Using Red Cabbage

DIY-ing and crafting is a great hobby and stress reliever for me, but I'm not set on one particular medium and tend to jump from woodworking to 3D printing to sewing an so on... It's all fun until you sit down and calculate how much money you actually spend on supplies that only get used once or twice. I have cans and jars filled with specialised varnishes, paints, waxes that are slowly drying out because I only needed a little bit for my project , but had to buy a quarter gallon. I like to experiment with home made concoctions whenever possible to cut the costs and possibly come up with new uses for certain products.

My newest project focused on home made wood stain, specifically purple dye I needed to stain a wooden chest. Before I used cabbage, I tried staining my wood with diluted food dye and acrylic paint, but final effect wasn't too impressive. Food dye was the worst, no matter what brand I used, I ended up with indigo instead of purple. Out of desperation, I decided to use red cabbage which, if you remember from chemistry lessons, has the ability to change colour. That turned out to be an additional bonus, because I was able to play with it and create different colours I might use in the future.

STEP 1: Extract the Juice

• Grate the cabbage in a food processor and transfer (few tablespoons at the time!) to a fine sieve.
• Push the cabbage with the back of your spoon until there is no more juice left to extract and repeat that process with remaining cabbage.
• You will be left with a foamy liquid and possibly few stray bits of cabbage. Run that liquid through a cheese cloth or a disposable kitchen towel to purify it.
• Your cabbage juice is now pure and foam-free. Transfer into a jar and keep in the fridge until needed.
• You can keep it in a fridge for a few days, but after that it will succumb to mould, so finish your project as soon as possible.
  
  

Red cabbage is used to dye fabric and there are a lot of Instructables and YouTube videos that show you how to do it. Most of them recommend chopping the cabbage and boiling it until all colour leaches into the water. I don't recommend this method, unless you want your house to smell for days. Grating the cabbage and extracting raw juice is quicker, relatively smell-free and final product is more concentrated.

STEP 2: Painting

Use a regular paintbrush to apply the liquid all over unvarnished wood or plywood. Leave it to dry naturally, don't wipe the excess off. It will be wet and nicely saturated at first, but as it dries, the colour will become more subdued. Second layer of juice, once dry, will give the wood more vibrant colour.

If you are not sure about the final result, test it on an offcut to determine how many layers will be needed and how saturated the colour will be once dry. Different woods produce different results and need different number of layers.

You can apply clear varnish once everything is dry completely (2-4hours).

STEP 3: Wood Filler?

For anyone interested in using the juice over wood filler- this is what happens. White filler turned grey and no matter how many layers of juice I painted over it, it wouldn't blend in.

STEP 4: Experimenting With PH and Different Colours

You can experiment with your cabbage juice by adding different quantities of acid (lemon juice/vinegar), which turns the cabbage juice pink-ish, or adding alkali (bicarb of soda/soap/bleach) which turns it blue-green.

STEP 5: Wet V Dry - Different Results

You can see from the pictures that wet and dry stripes look completely different. Wet blue stripes turned green and dark teal, wet dark pink turned light purple and very light pink turned darker pink.

If you are looking for a particular shade of pink or green-blue, you will have to test your mixture in 30min increments.

So, let's say you want a particular shade of teal - you will have to add a small amount of alkali to your cabbage juice, mix it, paint a stripe on your wood offcut and leave it to dry for 30min. After 30min, if you are not satisfied with the colour, add more alkali, paint another stripe and let it dry. Repeat until you get your desired colour.

It's important to test the mixture and let it fully dry each time more acid or alum is added. It looks completely different wet than it does dry and also, different wood types will yield different results.

STEP 6: Changing PH = Changing the Original Colour

The fun part of this project is the ability to change the original colour into red/dark pink or blue/green if you are not happy with purple. Simply paint lemon juice over the wood or apply a solution of bicarb and water and see the colour change before your eyes.

Comments

[andiD]

What type of varnish did you use? We experimented with one and it just washed the dye out.

[chris.andersen.2700]

All the usage of cabage or similar turns brown after some weeks

[JohnC430]

" but that juice stains cuticles and gets under the nails, and is very difficult to wash off. I tried everything to clean my fingernails and nothing worked"
did you try using a dilute solution of simple bathroom bleach?

Is the purple color on wood permanent?

[Miguel ÁngelL9]

Just an idea: paint a "background" layer and, once dry, draw with lemon juice and bleach instead of changing all the piece to another color.

[bbabbitt46]

What other vegetables could render a decent dye? Beets?

[ToniV22]

Onions or tea bags work too

[emanischwitch]

Another way to extract juice would be by slicing and sprinkling salt
as in fermentation for Saurkruat.

[garfieldgurl]

Oh how cool is this!!! I love how you used science for this dyeing experiment. I'm favoriting it for posterity. I also have a few cans of stain that are drying out in the garage that I don't know if I'll ever be able to finish. Thank you for sharing!

[gmartonic]

like the patina like blue....have a idea for it.....thanx

[pullingthread]

I’m also curious about the light fastness. Will the color change over time??

[chefspenser]

Very well done and informative...nice natural alturnative! Thanks for sharing!

[charles.pearmain]

Thanks for this interesting instructible. How light-fast did you find the dye to be on wood? Did it fade over time?

[snowknitty]

When making sauerkraut or slaw, salt is added to extract juice from cabbage. I wonder if you have tested adding salt to the cabbage to extract more juice?
Thanks for explaining the options, testing all the color combos, and sharing the pics. I can see stenciling (as I can't freehand paint) a stained piece using just alkali or acid to achieve the color change.

[jitkawest]

Thanks for sharing this technique. It looks so fun!

[RayPower]

It looks great! Now I need a project to use it with. Thanks for sharing