basic ingredients!

Do you wear lipstick? We'll even if you don't, you may eat maraschino cherries or partake in some other forms of bright red that makes use of cochineal red, also called "carmine."

This zine by Alexandria Rosen explores where this particular hue comes from (spoiler alert! - the little bodies of "scale insects"). It might sound to fantastical, perhaps an urban myth or a rumorish story that gets passed own from kid to kid ("you eat bugs!"), but even our skeptical friends at Snopes have fact checked this one.

This pigment in fact has a very long and venerable history of use in a number of cultures for the purposes of natural dyes.

Click on the image to the right to download a copy of the zine in PDF form to print out and fold up yourself.

- - Click on the image below to read it as a comic online: