Sun Prints

This fall when I was out hiking, I collected leaves from trees, ferns and weeds. Back at home, I pressed them in books to flatten them.  I tried to collect a variety of shapes and types of leaves to use in sun prints, also called cyanotypes.

Below is the two-part mixture product I used to make my sun prints.  

The process takes a bit of preparation, requiring you to add distilled water to the powder in each bottle, then wait 24 hours for the mixture to activate.  After 24 hours, you mix equal parts of Part A and Part B, stir it up and paint it onto whatever you want to use for printing.  

In this photo, you can see examples of paper cyanotypes I made.

After trying paper sun prints, I bought some 100% cotton napkins and painted them with the cyanotype mixture.  

You have to let the mixture dry before printing, and you have to do all of this in dim light, away from the sun.  I set up a painting station and drying rack in my pantry and kept the napkins in the dark while they dried.

Finally, I was ready to make sun prints!  

I laid out a napkin on a drawing board, arranged the pressed leaves, and put a piece of glass over the top to keep the leaves from being blown away by the wind.

After 20 minutes in afternoon sunshine, this is what the napkin looked like.

The cyanotype mixture changes color from yellowish green to bronze in the sun.

The final step is to rinse the print in cold water, which will set the print so it is no longer sensitive to light.

You can see the yellow-green mixture washing out from the areas that were covered by leaves.

You rinse until the water runs clear, then hang up your print to dry.

Here are two of the four napkins I printed.  As time passed, and the afternoon sun moved closer to the horizon, I had to expose the napkins longer, up to 30 minutes.  But I could always tell when the napkin turned bronze in the sun that the print was done.

You have to be careful when laundering your cyanotype fabrics not to use bleach or detergents with phosphate.  Also leaving them to soak too long can wash out the blue dye.  Hand washing is recommended.

But that's worth it for the thrill of creating things for your home that reflect the beauty of nature!

Happy Creating!