New ideas on how to "finish" furniture

HI :)

I was goggling around last night looking for plans to build an aquarium stand for hubby and found another interesting blog where another female tool user was reviewing some different ways to finish wood with stuff like tea and vinegar mixtures :)
http://www.toolgirl.com/toolgirl/2010/03/staining-wood-with-cheap-natural-and-nontoxic-tea.html#more

Of course geeky me decided to Google more about the vinegar mixtures to see if there were other methods and why it works. I foun another site that gives more ideas on how to stain wood:
http://www.woodworking.org/WC/Garchive01/3_27colorants.html

So basically if i throw a clean steel wood puff into a container and pour in vinegar, in a week or so I'll have a brown-like stain (I'm building with pine, not oak). it's called iron acetate when done.

Or I could use tea and test a few different teas to see what color I'd get, and if I wanted to deepen the color then use the iron acetate on top of it. Very cool.

Then the other idea was putting pennies in vinegar to get a turquoise stain, but the problem I saw is that I don't know if that mixture has a different name or if it is copper acetate, but if it is copper acetate, I read online that there used to be pigment made with that and some kind of arsenic and it was toxic. Now I'd assume it was the arsenic that made it that way, but i wanted to me sure.

But you know me, I can't just stay wondering, so lucky for me I have a science geek in the family :). I emailed my other sister Randi (told ya boys name run in the family lol) and she is having a PhD geek at her job check out the toxicity for me before i attempt to use it. Thanks chicky!

so now i have another side project of course, which is cool because I have scrap wood at home so I can test various teas and maybe some food coloring mixtures to see what I can make. I can't build until its a weekend and sunny, but I can color swatches on wood anywhere, so that should keep me busy for a bit :).

If anyone has any suggestions on what kind of teas to try to get some cool colors, let me know :).

Oh, and I did find a very cool plan for an aquarium stand that i can re-size for hubby's 55 gallon tank, so stay tuned after I build the bunk bed :).



(pic courtesy of Geothermal Aquaculture Research Foundation, Inc)