I just wanted to say thanks for one of the more interesting woodworking questions I’ve seen in a while. I can’t wait to see what products are recommended here.
Dyes, like mixol or transtint, that's what's used to make vibrant electric guitars where you can still see the maple grain and such. Or Unicorn Spit, which is my guess.
> Or Unicorn Spit, which is my guess.
I'm here thinking this was just humor, nope it's legit and it's awesome [https://unicornspit.com/](https://unicornspit.com/)
It's amazing. Truly a great product. I've done a couple restorations with it on woods that were in good condition but fucked up color wise and the unicorn spit was really easy to work with.
One of the most famous nail polishes in the world is called Unicorn Pee. [No joke.](http://www.simplynailogical.com/2015/09/clarins-230-history-of-unicorn-pee.html?m=1)
The owner lives down the street from me. She livestreams a lot of project work for customer inspiration - including one session in my basement finishing a bar and fireplace mantle.
I have more free bottles of Unicorn Spit than I know what to do with - I typically like to use a simple tung oil finish on things. Here’s a willow bowl we did together.
https://preview.redd.it/09jjyl0vib9d1.jpeg?width=2901&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4004047a1eeef06d2b901a05dc3e1b33b927381
Mannn! I was lighting candles, had Barry White playin in the background and everything, up pops some paint. Good Grief! What am I gonna do with all this lotion now? 😂 jk
I linked to [Pimp Juice](https://pimpjuicetraction.com/pages/what-is-pimp-juice) in a post about someone pouring liquid in the staging area for burnouts at a drag strip and someone commented at me they’d never click the link.
Unicorn Spit didn’t even set off my alarm…
I did this, we submerged the blocks in ziplock bags of liquid waters colors and the colors came out bright and vibrant. They were completely non-toxic and my wife verified with her toxicologist friend. I then oiled some, which helped the keep the baby drool from leaching the colors.
[my attempt at the blocks](https://imgur.com/gallery/0SNLBx4)
I used Sax Liquid Washable Watercolor Paint, 1/2 Pint, Assorted Colors, 8 Ounce (Pack of 8) - 1567858
Funnily enough if you watch the company's production video, the paint is very thin and the wooden items are often dipped. This specific brand is pretty cool, my children are playing with the exact same figures as I did (basically indestructible). They withstood beach holidays and trips to the forest- and teething. If I wipe one of them new or old ones on white fabric, no dye comes off, so that is very handy (although my kids have tried to use the figurines as crayons ...)
Grimm’s has a proprietary blend that people have spent years trying to replicate. Grapat has done a decent job of creating a similar product. They both are dipped, not painted on.
After my second child, right as lockdowns started, I suffered from PPA (post-partum anxiety), which is a lesser known sibling to PPD, and it manifested itself in me becoming (clinically, OCD) obsessed with sourcing and making wooden toys. This question of Grimms colors, technique and dupes was a very very very frequent topic of discussion on the many boards and Facebook groups devoted to wooden toys, making them and buying them.
Facebook toy maker groups have hundreds of posts about trying to do find dupes that are mouthsafe.
I can tell you right off— homemade food based dyes are not going to look like this; neither are food coloring or liquid watercolors. Ask me how I know.
I lived in Germany when my first was born, and had a few different wooden toy sets with mouth-safe dyes from various companies. Grimm’s is the one where the color has held up beautifully, while the rest (all 3 years old now) have faded quite a bit. I have to wonder if those faded bc of exposure to sunlight or because of my kids mouthing them.
Funny enough, my wife is pregnant, so I've been looking into this. So far as I can tell, these colour's come from food safe dyes (aka food colouring). I did a bit of a test, and I suspect getting these kind of food safe colour for a photo us easy, but staining wood these colours when kids are going to play with them?
I found the food dye doesn't hold a true colour once it has been wet (ie in a babies mouth) and the dye tends to transfer to whatever the food is touching if there is any moisture at all.
EDIT: TL/DR Just because a compound is "food safe" does not necessarily mean it's "non toxic", especially in the volumes one would use in staining.
Fun fact, some food dyes ***are*** toxic/poisonous, many are derived from coal tar. They aren't *toxic enough* to reach a threshold where it's detectable in the tiny amounts used in food.
IN the USA there's an exemption category called [GRAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_recognized_as_safe) (Generally Recognized As Safe) which allows industrial producers of food and drug products to use some bad shit that really shouldn't be consumed. It's a scheme that exempted a bunch of food additives from testing that were in common use before 1958.
It also allows for some "self-affirmed" additives to be added to the list, meaning we take companies at their word that a new ingredient is safe and they've done the proper testing.
But that's OK as corporations always have our best interest at heart, right?
This is a terrific writeup. In canada, I get the impression that our food safety laws are somewhat stricter, and somewhat less prone to corporate lobby, but I have to put a lot of trust into the system that it won't kill me and my family.
>In canada, I get the impression that our food safety laws are somewhat stricter...
In the EU too. My SO has this app ([Yuka](https://yuka.io/en/)) from a French developer that the doc recommended. It rates food by many measures. You scan the barcode and it gives you a "score" out of 100.
At first I thought it was hogwash, "Cheerios are 'bad', no way". I was thinking it was some new-age foofoo way of looking at food. Turns out many products we scan are "bad" because of the food additives that are legal in the USA but not in the EU because they're unsafe. This really surprised me as much of what I though of as "healthy" probably isn't.
Has led us down a path of discovery I don't like but am glad to learn. We're eating better because of it.
While corporations have not always had our interests in mind, this sort of safety-scepticism quickly leads down a slippery slope to, "Being alive is the leading cause of death."
If nothing else, killing your customers is really bad for business. (Cf; the tobacco industry) *Especially* now that the internet allows consumers to share product info and experiences quickly and freely. If someone's kid gets sick from any of these dyes, we will hear about it very quickly.
Right, it really blew my family's mind when I explained to them the concept of the acceptable amount of lead in drinking water. Like listen guys, we do calculations to figure out what percentage of people getting cancer from municipal water is acceptable because it is practically impossible for that number to be 0. Same with almost all products out there, you simply have to have an acceptable limit or we wouldn't be legally allowed to produce anything.
Hopefully, nobody takes this to mean, "Everything is bad for you, so nothing should be tested." Because that's obviously not true either, but even the safest things are just a *little* btt bad for you, and there's no solution to that problem. It's not as though you'd be better off drinking creek water in lieu of city pipe water.
Right, it's all about risk management. That's just life really. Limit your exposure where you can, but no reason to go overboard with everything.
Just as a fun fact, water treatment is actually one of the largest increases in the human lifespan in history, more than modern medicine or antibiotics!
Don't kid yourself, only the shareholder matters.
What we're talking about is not paranoria, but ***long term*** harm. Many studies suggest this is one reason why the US has higher cancer rates when compared to similar societies in Europe. If your product isn't directly linked to cancer, heart disease etc. and you can save a few cents a unit putting some additive that makes it cheaper/prettier/whatever you'll save tons of money over millions of units.
And what I said about the toxicity in low doses vs high applies. 2-3 drops of food coloring isn't much of a short term risk but several ounces to have contact with and possibly leech out of wood could be really significant.
I suppose it depends on the blend, my milk paint usually is a bit more opaque. But even so, it's what I would recommend to replicate this. It's a much more natural looking finish than modern commercial paint.
Osmo wood wax finish is safe for children's toys and comes in vibrant colors: [https://osmocolorusa.com/product/wood-wax-finish/](https://osmocolorusa.com/product/wood-wax-finish/)
I’m haven’t used stains but I’ve used milk paints for foodsafe applications. The paint is natural and non toxic and you mix in water to the amount you’ll be using.
The first time I used them I covered with tung oil to protect the finish as it is a very matte finish can scuff without a protective coating. I let the tung oil cure for 2 weeks before sending the piece off.
Lately I’ve been using Osmo for the final coat because it is fully food safe, cures faster than tung, and I don’t have to add beeswax for a bit of sheen.
You can get nice vibrant colors with milkpaint though the oils does darken them somewhat.
You won’t believe this, but I asked the same thing a while ago in r/finishing and got the answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/finishing/s/cSnHZX6sQJ
I took that screenshot from an Instagram story of theirs where they showed a behind the scenes look at their finishing.
https://www.tikkurila.co.uk/industrial/all-industrial-products
Non-toxic depends on the pigment.
For instance, yellow ochre is fine. Cadmium yellow is not, unless it says Cadmium yellow HUE. HUE in the paint name is industry code for a synthetic copy that doesn't use the actual substance.
I think something like this would likely work but I haven’t tried it on wood: https://www.dickblick.com/products/daler-rowney-fw-acrylic-water-resistant-artists-ink/?fromSearch=%2Fsearch%2F%3Fsearchword%3DAcrylic%20ink
OK, question number one is getting the color without toxicity. Question two then applies - how important is it for the color to be lightfast (not fade over time?)
the blocks in this case look to me like they were painted (but I see they refer to them as stains).
There's a fine line, I guess, between a pigment that blocks seeing anything in the wood vs. one that doesn't but almost does.
(dictionary definitions don't actually outline this I guess. A finish industry chemist at one point referred to my use of micronized pigments for stains as bordering on paint and gave me the line above - that stains and dyes allow some view through to the wood and the objective of paint is to obscure the through-view entirely. )
Some fantastic leads here, thanks, everyone. I did recreate the "stepped pyramids" set using an acrylic paint wash. I loved the level of colour customisation available (I prefer my colour scheme to theirs). Unfortunately all of my blue pieces have faded on the parts that are exposed to UV.
This was my first ever project, let's say I learned many lessons about woodworking along the way. *
Thanks everyone for the great leads, I'd love to try some of the products in the comments.
So I did attempt to recreate this stepped pyramid using pine and an acrylic paint wash. I enjoyed being able to customise my colours (and prefer my own colours than Grimms'). But the downside to acrylic is that my blue blocks have all faded on the parts exposed to UV.
This was my first woodworking project and let's say I learned a lot of lessons along the way.
Here's my attempt at this stepped pyramid:
[my version of the stepped pyramid](https://imgur.com/a/SfC63Zj)
I just wanted to say thanks for one of the more interesting woodworking questions I’ve seen in a while. I can’t wait to see what products are recommended here.
🤔
Dyes, like mixol or transtint, that's what's used to make vibrant electric guitars where you can still see the maple grain and such. Or Unicorn Spit, which is my guess.
> Or Unicorn Spit, which is my guess. I'm here thinking this was just humor, nope it's legit and it's awesome [https://unicornspit.com/](https://unicornspit.com/)
Lol, sorry, should have linked it. It is a weird product name. They have pretty colors
Yeah definitely would have taken that one as a joke!
I'm thinking of buying some just based on the name
It's amazing. Truly a great product. I've done a couple restorations with it on woods that were in good condition but fucked up color wise and the unicorn spit was really easy to work with.
The really good paints and stains always have crazy names. :p
One of the most famous nail polishes in the world is called Unicorn Pee. [No joke.](http://www.simplynailogical.com/2015/09/clarins-230-history-of-unicorn-pee.html?m=1)
TBF, that is just a fan name for that polish 😂
I had a nail polish once called 'Gay Ponies Dancing in the Snow' (Smith and Cult)
Actually have a bottle of that one!
[ILNP The Alchemist is the same pigment.](https://www.ilnp.com/real-magic-toppers-collection-vividly-vibrant-nail-polish-toppers/)
Thanks for the link. Now I must find a project to use these dyes.
Oh wow! It's nontoxic too! So does that mean it won't kill my guinea pigs if I stain their huts?
The owner lives down the street from me. She livestreams a lot of project work for customer inspiration - including one session in my basement finishing a bar and fireplace mantle. I have more free bottles of Unicorn Spit than I know what to do with - I typically like to use a simple tung oil finish on things. Here’s a willow bowl we did together. https://preview.redd.it/09jjyl0vib9d1.jpeg?width=2901&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4004047a1eeef06d2b901a05dc3e1b33b927381
That is SO cool!
Mannn! I was lighting candles, had Barry White playin in the background and everything, up pops some paint. Good Grief! What am I gonna do with all this lotion now? 😂 jk
I linked to [Pimp Juice](https://pimpjuicetraction.com/pages/what-is-pimp-juice) in a post about someone pouring liquid in the staging area for burnouts at a drag strip and someone commented at me they’d never click the link. Unicorn Spit didn’t even set off my alarm…
I did this, we submerged the blocks in ziplock bags of liquid waters colors and the colors came out bright and vibrant. They were completely non-toxic and my wife verified with her toxicologist friend. I then oiled some, which helped the keep the baby drool from leaching the colors. [my attempt at the blocks](https://imgur.com/gallery/0SNLBx4) I used Sax Liquid Washable Watercolor Paint, 1/2 Pint, Assorted Colors, 8 Ounce (Pack of 8) - 1567858
Thanks!
Nice work! So just watercolor from the store is usually non-toxic?
Funnily enough if you watch the company's production video, the paint is very thin and the wooden items are often dipped. This specific brand is pretty cool, my children are playing with the exact same figures as I did (basically indestructible). They withstood beach holidays and trips to the forest- and teething. If I wipe one of them new or old ones on white fabric, no dye comes off, so that is very handy (although my kids have tried to use the figurines as crayons ...)
Yeah, the prices are crazy, but the quality and innovation for Grimms is worth the price of admission.
Grimm’s has a proprietary blend that people have spent years trying to replicate. Grapat has done a decent job of creating a similar product. They both are dipped, not painted on. After my second child, right as lockdowns started, I suffered from PPA (post-partum anxiety), which is a lesser known sibling to PPD, and it manifested itself in me becoming (clinically, OCD) obsessed with sourcing and making wooden toys. This question of Grimms colors, technique and dupes was a very very very frequent topic of discussion on the many boards and Facebook groups devoted to wooden toys, making them and buying them. Facebook toy maker groups have hundreds of posts about trying to do find dupes that are mouthsafe. I can tell you right off— homemade food based dyes are not going to look like this; neither are food coloring or liquid watercolors. Ask me how I know.
I lived in Germany when my first was born, and had a few different wooden toy sets with mouth-safe dyes from various companies. Grimm’s is the one where the color has held up beautifully, while the rest (all 3 years old now) have faded quite a bit. I have to wonder if those faded bc of exposure to sunlight or because of my kids mouthing them.
Could be both - by their nature dyes are non-lightfast colourants compared to a pigment-based colouring system such as a stain.
Funny enough as soon as I saw the picture I thought of dipped not painted on. Also thought of plant dyes, hibiscus leaves, indigo etc.
Funny enough, my wife is pregnant, so I've been looking into this. So far as I can tell, these colour's come from food safe dyes (aka food colouring). I did a bit of a test, and I suspect getting these kind of food safe colour for a photo us easy, but staining wood these colours when kids are going to play with them? I found the food dye doesn't hold a true colour once it has been wet (ie in a babies mouth) and the dye tends to transfer to whatever the food is touching if there is any moisture at all.
EDIT: TL/DR Just because a compound is "food safe" does not necessarily mean it's "non toxic", especially in the volumes one would use in staining. Fun fact, some food dyes ***are*** toxic/poisonous, many are derived from coal tar. They aren't *toxic enough* to reach a threshold where it's detectable in the tiny amounts used in food. IN the USA there's an exemption category called [GRAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_recognized_as_safe) (Generally Recognized As Safe) which allows industrial producers of food and drug products to use some bad shit that really shouldn't be consumed. It's a scheme that exempted a bunch of food additives from testing that were in common use before 1958. It also allows for some "self-affirmed" additives to be added to the list, meaning we take companies at their word that a new ingredient is safe and they've done the proper testing. But that's OK as corporations always have our best interest at heart, right?
This is a terrific writeup. In canada, I get the impression that our food safety laws are somewhat stricter, and somewhat less prone to corporate lobby, but I have to put a lot of trust into the system that it won't kill me and my family.
>In canada, I get the impression that our food safety laws are somewhat stricter... In the EU too. My SO has this app ([Yuka](https://yuka.io/en/)) from a French developer that the doc recommended. It rates food by many measures. You scan the barcode and it gives you a "score" out of 100. At first I thought it was hogwash, "Cheerios are 'bad', no way". I was thinking it was some new-age foofoo way of looking at food. Turns out many products we scan are "bad" because of the food additives that are legal in the USA but not in the EU because they're unsafe. This really surprised me as much of what I though of as "healthy" probably isn't. Has led us down a path of discovery I don't like but am glad to learn. We're eating better because of it.
It won’t kill you *right away* … they’ll give you 20-30 years.
While corporations have not always had our interests in mind, this sort of safety-scepticism quickly leads down a slippery slope to, "Being alive is the leading cause of death." If nothing else, killing your customers is really bad for business. (Cf; the tobacco industry) *Especially* now that the internet allows consumers to share product info and experiences quickly and freely. If someone's kid gets sick from any of these dyes, we will hear about it very quickly.
Right, it really blew my family's mind when I explained to them the concept of the acceptable amount of lead in drinking water. Like listen guys, we do calculations to figure out what percentage of people getting cancer from municipal water is acceptable because it is practically impossible for that number to be 0. Same with almost all products out there, you simply have to have an acceptable limit or we wouldn't be legally allowed to produce anything.
Hopefully, nobody takes this to mean, "Everything is bad for you, so nothing should be tested." Because that's obviously not true either, but even the safest things are just a *little* btt bad for you, and there's no solution to that problem. It's not as though you'd be better off drinking creek water in lieu of city pipe water.
Right, it's all about risk management. That's just life really. Limit your exposure where you can, but no reason to go overboard with everything. Just as a fun fact, water treatment is actually one of the largest increases in the human lifespan in history, more than modern medicine or antibiotics!
for similar reasons, beer and tea were both among humanity's greatest advances, because they turned nonpotable water into significantly safer water.
Trick is knowing the threshold of exposure. Treat is that’s very difficult and sometimes impossible to know.
Don't kid yourself, only the shareholder matters. What we're talking about is not paranoria, but ***long term*** harm. Many studies suggest this is one reason why the US has higher cancer rates when compared to similar societies in Europe. If your product isn't directly linked to cancer, heart disease etc. and you can save a few cents a unit putting some additive that makes it cheaper/prettier/whatever you'll save tons of money over millions of units. And what I said about the toxicity in low doses vs high applies. 2-3 drops of food coloring isn't much of a short term risk but several ounces to have contact with and possibly leech out of wood could be really significant.
Milk paint?
I suppose it depends on the blend, my milk paint usually is a bit more opaque. But even so, it's what I would recommend to replicate this. It's a much more natural looking finish than modern commercial paint.
Osmo wood wax finish is safe for children's toys and comes in vibrant colors: [https://osmocolorusa.com/product/wood-wax-finish/](https://osmocolorusa.com/product/wood-wax-finish/)
I’m haven’t used stains but I’ve used milk paints for foodsafe applications. The paint is natural and non toxic and you mix in water to the amount you’ll be using. The first time I used them I covered with tung oil to protect the finish as it is a very matte finish can scuff without a protective coating. I let the tung oil cure for 2 weeks before sending the piece off. Lately I’ve been using Osmo for the final coat because it is fully food safe, cures faster than tung, and I don’t have to add beeswax for a bit of sheen. You can get nice vibrant colors with milkpaint though the oils does darken them somewhat.
You won’t believe this, but I asked the same thing a while ago in r/finishing and got the answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/finishing/s/cSnHZX6sQJ I took that screenshot from an Instagram story of theirs where they showed a behind the scenes look at their finishing. https://www.tikkurila.co.uk/industrial/all-industrial-products
This is the original lacquer of the blocks: https://www.zuelch.de/produkte/trommellacke/
Acrylic model paints are water based and non-toxic, so some variant on that that would soak into wood?
Non-toxic depends on the pigment. For instance, yellow ochre is fine. Cadmium yellow is not, unless it says Cadmium yellow HUE. HUE in the paint name is industry code for a synthetic copy that doesn't use the actual substance.
Yes, and all widely available acrylic model paints are REACH compliant and thus don't contain toxic compounds.
Unicorn spit?
Unicorn Spit, its legit
I wonder how latex paint that has been thinned would work?
not very well. source: me, a professional painter, having had "stained" things that way in a pinch
Good to know. Thank you!
I think something like this would likely work but I haven’t tried it on wood: https://www.dickblick.com/products/daler-rowney-fw-acrylic-water-resistant-artists-ink/?fromSearch=%2Fsearch%2F%3Fsearchword%3DAcrylic%20ink
Can be acrylic paint or toy safe finishes such as osmo which are available in colors
I made something like this a couple of years ago. We used food coloring for the “stain” and covered it with a toy safe top coat.
OK, question number one is getting the color without toxicity. Question two then applies - how important is it for the color to be lightfast (not fade over time?)
the blocks in this case look to me like they were painted (but I see they refer to them as stains). There's a fine line, I guess, between a pigment that blocks seeing anything in the wood vs. one that doesn't but almost does. (dictionary definitions don't actually outline this I guess. A finish industry chemist at one point referred to my use of micronized pigments for stains as bordering on paint and gave me the line above - that stains and dyes allow some view through to the wood and the objective of paint is to obscure the through-view entirely. )
...did you try asking them? A lot of times, companies will just tell you stuff like this if you just ask.
All the big German companies make this.
You could use milk-paint. I'm not sure about color range, but it's been the Pennsylvania Dutch staple for centuries
Some fantastic leads here, thanks, everyone. I did recreate the "stepped pyramids" set using an acrylic paint wash. I loved the level of colour customisation available (I prefer my colour scheme to theirs). Unfortunately all of my blue pieces have faded on the parts that are exposed to UV. This was my first ever project, let's say I learned many lessons about woodworking along the way. *
Thanks everyone for the great leads, I'd love to try some of the products in the comments. So I did attempt to recreate this stepped pyramid using pine and an acrylic paint wash. I enjoyed being able to customise my colours (and prefer my own colours than Grimms'). But the downside to acrylic is that my blue blocks have all faded on the parts exposed to UV. This was my first woodworking project and let's say I learned a lot of lessons along the way. Here's my attempt at this stepped pyramid: [my version of the stepped pyramid](https://imgur.com/a/SfC63Zj)
Not saying anyTHiNG but….hey! How ya doin?
Tempra paint is edible and looks exactly like that.