If you want to give this a try yourself, use this link (this is what I followed actually). Don't try and follow my methods since their full of shortcuts, neglect for safety measures, and confusion
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/11/293/index.php
I made a very small batch of pastels. They took me about 2 hours from set-up to clean-up. They're goofy looking, but they worked!!
This was just a test run, so I just made a TINY batch and used only one pigment: prussian blue.
From what I've gathered by reading around, one basically needs:
water (distilled is probably best but I just used my well-water)
gum tragacanth (i found some being sold with the bulk herbs in a local health-food/herb shop)
kaolin or white clay (or white chalk i guess) (the health-food store also had this)
pigment (i bought a container of sennelier titanium white and a container of prussian blue)
Here's what I paid: water was free, the gum tragacanth was about 5 dollars for 3/4 a cup or so in a baggy (50$ lb - but you dont need much), the clay was 6 dollars for a big bag (11$ lb.), and the pigments were about 10 dollars each at a local art store, but you can buy em online for less.
The recipes on the site involve a solution made of gum tragacanth and an anti-mildew preservative sort of chemical. I didn't use any preservative. I'll find the chemical eventually, but this test batch can mildew all it likes - I don't mind.
You're supposed to mix a bit of the gum tragacinth with some water and leave it sitting overnight (about 1 teaspoon gum trag powder for 8 oz. water) . It's super-gummy stuff and doesn't mix all that well. I'm incredibly impatient though, so I waited (drum roll please).. 30 minutes!! I used warm water and shook it a lot inside of a smuckers jelly jar. I smushed the clumps using a pallete knife as if I were making pudding.
Depending on the pigment, you water this mixture down even further. For a harder pastel, water it down less. For a softer pastel, add more water. I used about half this mixture with half plain water for the white. Use the link about for the real ratios.
Using my own scaled down version of the recipes on that site I mixed 1 teaspoon of titanium white with 3 teaspoons of clay. I mixed these around in a paper cup, and put them on my mixing plate. Then I added 2 teaspoons of the further watered-down watered-down solution.
It was way too runny. It looked like I was trying to make a pancake. So, I mixed a teaspoon of titanium white and 3 of clay in a paper cup, and threw that in. I mashed that around for a while and did a lot of smearing with a plastic pallete knife. Eventually I made a sticky dough. (it was too sticky but I didn't realize that at the time, and I was enjoying myself anyway)
Once things were good and mixed I sectioned off a piece and made some vaguely cylindrical shapes. I placed them on newsprint.
I left the remaining portion of the white doughy stuff to mix with my prussian blue.
I placed a teaspoon of prussian blue on another plate. I scooped up some of the solution into a teaspoon, but only filled it halfway or so. I added straight water to top it off... so it was probably 1/2 water 1/2 solution (but i used the solution for the titanium white, so that was already extra watery).
I added that to the prussian blue. Eventually I added just a tad more of the same. The resulting paste was soooo vibrantly dark. I made a mess. It was a good time.
I formed a pastel of the prussian by itself, and then I took some of the white paste and mashed it together with some of the prussian. I repeated this in varying amounts till I vaguelly had a series of values. I missed a dark value or two though - I was rushing and didn't feel like going back to fill in the value.
Eventually I had a bunch of pastel-like segments and a pair of very dirty hands. It's fun stuff to feel on your hands. If you rub it between your fingers it dries on the spot and there's a strange switch from wet to powder-dry. I know there are dangerous pigments out there which shouldn't be all-over one's hands, and I know that particles in the air should stay out of your lungs, but I'm still tickin' and feeling fine. I did rub my eye at some point though, but it's barely bothered by the dust. Either way, I'm used to pastel dust.
I put the pieces in the oven. My oven has a digital dial and it won't go as low as 150, so I baked these for a while at 170. After about thirty minutes I took out the platter. I'm soooo impatient. This seemed to dry out the thin pieces fairly well. I'm going to leave the big piece, which I made using all the left-over dough (both white and blue), sitting overnight -- it's still a bit pliable.
I tried out the pastels. They're still a teensy tiny bit damp, so I can't say for sure how they'll perform. I'm assuming they'll be a bit better off when truly dry, but they're great even right now.
They're pretty darn soft and smooth. One can really feel the clay, instead of white chalk or anything silly like that, giving the pastel a creamy texture. I'd say they're about as hard as hard as a sennelier and about as consistent (in other words, not very consistent. The darker the prussian blue pastel, the harder it is. The super dark is still soft, but could be softer. I'll even less binder on that one next time, but the ratio for the white seemed dead-on).
This wasn't so bad, and I learned a lot about how the binders, clays, and pigments work together. Now, when I rub my schmincke white I think "oooh clay-like!" to myself instead of "oooh buttery!." This experiment is definitely worth the bother.
So, 1 teaspoon prussian blue, 2 teaspoons titanium white, and 6 teaspoons white clay yielded the following batch:
That's a good bit of material for such a small pile of pigment and filler. I'd say this works out fairly well price-wise, but with the low low prices on ebay.. it's hard to compete. If I buy bulk pigments (or lesser quality pigments) I might be better off.
Oh, I tried out my creations against schminke, sennelier, unison, rembrandt, and nupastel. Mine is the first blotch. I didn't have a white unison, so I used a light tint.
Anyhow, here's my end spectrum for this little test-run:
-Craig
...Deborah 
It looks as if you got an excellent range of tints from just the Prussian blue.
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