Parchment:

The number one thing that kept me from making parchment for many years was the lack of availability of specialty tools. I don't have metal working tools or experience, so I was stuck. I hope that by sharing what I have done I can help save people from frustration and get more people up and running (or scraping as it were) with the craft of parchment making. Click here to see how I made my herse, lunellum, and fleshing beam.

Trigger Warning: Working with freshly skinned hides isn't for everyone. If you are squeamish about blood and/or killing animals don't click through. Our sheep are pasture-raised in a closed herd on our property. The flock is taken care of by me and my family from birth to death. I also get hides gifted to me by a friend who keeps a large ranch with sheep, pigs, and cattle. She gives me hides that would otherwise be wasted.

There are no known extant sources explaining how parchment was dyed for manuscripts. There are some artists' recipes for adding a ground color to parchment in preparation for painting, but my interest and experiments are geared towards how the pages of a manuscript might have been colored. I suspect that it was done differently. I have the unique combination of hands-on experience as a natural dyer and as a parchment maker.

Some projects that friends and I have made using my parchment. Projects include: faux stained glass, limp vellum book binding, illumination, scrolls, and some flights of fancy. Some projects are period-based, some are not -- you have been warned.

For posterity and for those who like this kind of thing.

Works sited in my paper written to support my theory about colored parchment.