The chickens have escaped!

Raining today, so I decided to carry on painting the ceiling in the kitchen. All the paint in this house has been home-made and, believe me, it’s really easy to do. Stop spreading those petro-chemical slops around your home and go natural!
If you’re rich, go and buy some from somewhere like the Green Shop, if you’re poor like me, make it yourself.

Here’s a really simple paint recipe which I’ve been using for years…

There are only three ingredients:

1. I use something called ‘fromage blanc’, but if you can’t buy that then you can simply use soured milk. Either leave the milk out in the sun all day, or add some lemon juice until it curdles and goes really lumpy (this is curds and whey).

2. The other ingredient is hydraulic lime, which is a white powder derived from limestone and which you can probably buy from a builders’ yard.

3. Finally, if you want some colour in the paint, buy some natural pigments (available from any eco-suppliers such as the one already mentioned) or make your own by boiling up nice-coloured earth (something I know nothing about, better google that one!)

Now the how-to bit:

You’ll need a container for mixing (minimum 2 litre capacity) and a large spoon.

1. Put 1 kg of fromage blanc (or 1 litre of lumpy milk, as above) into the container.

2. Slowly add the lime, mixing well as you go, until you reach the 2 litre level. Don’t worry if it seems lumpy, just keep going, keep mixing.

3. Allow to stand for half an hour – this stage is very important as it changes the consistency.

4. If there are still a few lumps, a final stir at this point will get rid of them. The paint should now be the same consistency as a conventional emulsion paint, if it’s too thick add small amounts of water to adjust the consistency.

5. If you are adding colour, now’s the time. You need to first ’slake’ your pigment, by adding some water to it and stirring until there are no lumps. Now add this to your paint, little by little, stirring in really well each time. You will find you need much less pigment than you think – as a very rough guide, half a teaspoon in 2 litres of paint is all I put in to get a medium-strong colour – but remember that pigments vary so there are no rules! (If you’ve added pigment, you will probably find you need to stir the paint occasionally during painting – I don’t know why but it seems to make to lime settle quicker at the bottom of the tub.)

6. Now pick up your brush, and paint!

Variations:

• Sometimes I add half a cup of linseed oil to the paint to make it more durable, and this also gives it a slightly ’satin’ finish.

• Some people use chalk instead of lime, but I have never tried this.

And finally:

• I know that the idea of painting with cheese could seem a bit weird. If you (or your partner) are too freaked out, why not do a trial run in a less-important place, like the garage, to give yourself confidence.

• Because it’s natural, you can paint all day without any side effects from the weird thinners and other chemicals they put in ‘normal’ paint; headaches from the solvents and a smell of paint which could last for days.

• Although it looks quite clear as you apply it, the paint is very opaque once dry and I have never had to apply more than one coat.

• If left without pigment, this paint dries a nice pale cream colour, and is not grey like it looks when wet.

Try painting with real paints, and send me a picture of what you’ve done!