Lessons in DIY Milk Paint
By Jenn (TinyChoices.com) | July 27, 2010
I’m not quite sure how three years of Tiny Choices posts have accumulated without me yet writing about the paint I made for my bedroom walls, but here we are and I’ve not yet told you about it. So!
When I moved into my apartment about five years ago, I knew that all of the white walls had to go. I bought some turquoise low-VOC Benjamin Moore paint for my living room, and then began researching milk paint for my bedroom. For the uninitiated, milk paint consists of– yes– milk, plus lime and pigment, and is pretty much the most natural paint concoction available. There are a few companies making it commercially, so it’s easy to buy a ready-made powder to mix with water at home.
But of course, I needed to DIY it. I mean, milk paint– what’s so complex about that, right? I figured I’d just mix up my own batch and swoop it onto my walls, all easy-peasy.
So I went out and bought a gallon of milk, and poured it into a bucket. I bought powdered lime from a hardware store, and mixed some of that in, too. A few of the many milkpaint recipes I’d researched recommended adding some plaster of paris to the mix, so in it went. And then it came time to add pigment, to create the color I desired for my bedroom.
Since I had visions of a purple room, I poured a can of grape juice concentrate into the bucket. Can you guess what happened next? The acidic grape juice curdled the milk, and I was left with a crumbly mess. The most surprising part of this was that, instead of a purple mess, I had a light green mess in the bucket– some crazy chemical reaction completely changed the expected color outcome! Here’s the main benefit of using milkpaint– since it was completely food-based and non-toxic, I dumped the whole curdled mess down the toilet.
I conceded defeat in the pigment department, and went to an artists supply shop in Manhattan to buy powdered pigment. I had kind of fallen in love with the green color so I got some in that shade, brought it home, and mixed up a second batch of milkpaint. Success!
Well, kind of. When I tried to apply the paint to the walls, it didn’t stick: turned out that, since the walls had been previously painted with a commercial paint, the semi-gloss finish prevented adherence. Since the room was all prepped for painting and I’m not one to let a DIY project get the best of me, I found a rag and started wiping/smearing the paint onto the walls. It stuck! And I ended up with a gorgeous (if non-replicable) green milkpaint finish.
Five years have passed, and the paint is holding up perfectly well and still looks beautiful. Would I attempt this project again? Probably not from scratch, but definitely with a commercial milkpaint, made by folks who really know what they’re doing.
Have you ever attempted a homemade finish on walls, furniture, or clothes? Lessons learned?
Topics: Crafts/DIY | 5 Comments »
My husband makes furniture for a living, and for a while he did a milk-paint finish on some small pieces. He used green, but commercially available pigments, because he needed to offer consistent colors.
Coincidentally, however, this weekend I found the book “Green Guide for Artists: Nontoxic Recipes, Green Art Ideas, & Resources for the Eco-Conscious Artist” in the new books section of the local library. It’s full of instructions and recipes for mixing paint from greener alternatives, as well as info on better commercially available choices. Needless to say, it’s now on my list of books to own someday.
my dad is a huge fan of milk paint as a finish in general, and you can get good green commerically available pigments pretty easily. Though one thing–it is impossible to strip milk paint from a piece. It has to be sanded off, and cannot be scraped or chemically removed.
I wonder if the problem you had with the sticking was a result of the semi-gloss finish, and if sanding the gloss down would have helped? I’ve had similar issues with commerically available latex paint not sticking to a prepped (and in one case, fully sanded) surface and it was ANNOYING.
This is a great project to read about, and I love all that you’re doing on your blog here. I’m an artist who has gone down the road of making some of my own pigments and paints from common sources, hopefully a bit more sustainable than some of those found at the art store. I have a little technical feedback on your results, if you don’t mind: first, the reason the grape juice didn’t work is that it isn’t a pigment, it’s a dye. Some dyes can be used directly as inks, but to use them in paint they need to be turned into an insoluble pigment first, something called a lake pigment. Some dyes lake well, others don’t. (There’s also the fact that most natural organic lake pigments fade rather quickly, but that’s a different issue.) I’ve never tried grape juice, but I’ve made lake pigments from, among other things, blackberries, raspberries and red cabbage.
The reason the grape juice turned green when you mixed it in: the colorant of red grape juice is an anthocyanin – anthocyanins are sensitive to pH and change color whether in acidic or alkaline conditions. So it was probably the alkaline lime that turned the grape juice green.
At some point later this fall I’ll post on my blog about how to make a lake pigment. But the most friendly green pigment you could get at the store would probably be green earth, or terre verte – it will say PG23 on the container. Chromium oxide PG17 wouldn’t be too bad either, and is a brighter green than the terre verte.
Keep doing the good stuff!
Thanks for this great info! I’ve always wondered what “lake” was when I saw it in an ingredients list… now I know. :)
Awesome post! And way to persevere! Although I have never made my own milk paint, I have thought about it a few times. The best commercial brand is genuine old fashioned milk paint. However, unless you buy their made for walls paint or a binder you will have trouble on previously painted walls. If however you are just painting raw wood or something porous, the regular powder works great. I recommend searching the web for it at a discounted price. A place like http://www.mistermilkpaint.com has great prices.