Experimenting With Sour Cherries

Every year my family get a small crop of sour cherries and since now we haven't really done much with them because they are so sour! But today I have been experimenting with using these cherries to make various things.

Firstly, I decided to attempt to make some ink from them. After squishing all the juice out of about 10 cherries I added one teaspoon each of apple cider vinegar and salt, which I have read will preserve the ink so it can be used for longer. 

I was worried that this ink would give a fairly pale mark on paper, however, I found that it does give a nice strong colour, in parts pink, and strangely enough in other parts it has turned a pale lavender/blue which I think also looks nice.

Since I used all natural and edible ingredients, and the ink is so bright, I thought it might be interesting to try out using the ink as lip and cheek stain. I found that it does work fairly well and I was especially pleased with the way it looks as a cheek stain, however, the taste is not particularly pleasant so it works less well as lip stain!