playing with sunprint paper

I’ve always wanted to play with sunprint paper, also called cyanotype paper. It looks so cool and fun and easy. Well it’s definitely that. I ordered a pack of Sun Art Paperoff of Amazon, reasonably priced, it came with 15 sheets and a clear acrylic sheet to hold your items in place.

Ages 6 and up. That’s me.

So I went shopping around my house and yard and found some fun items to make prints of. I started with some old bottles, just to see how the glass would imprint on the paper. I placed some cardboard on a tray, for easy handling and then put the paper on the cardboard, then my bottles on the paper.

I took the tray outside and placed it in direct sunlight, which we have no shortage of here.

The shadows made more of an imprint on the paper than the actual bottles did. After about 2 minutes the paper was a very light blue, I quickly took it inside and rinsed it with water. As it dried I noticed that the picture wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be.

I read the instructions again and noted that it says to get a more intense blue, make a water bath with a couple drops of lemon juice. So I did. I make another print with some flowers and such from the yard.

I left it in the sun a little longer, around 5 minutes.

Then I rinsed it in the lemon water bath.

It ended up looking like this. I realized that I need to use the acrylic board, too much sunlight is getting under the objects. Then the prints came out much better.

Here are some of my favorites..

This one came out funny because of the shadows making the flatware seem skewed. When I when to “develop” it in the lemon water bath, I realized I had two pieces of paper stuck together. The one underneath made a very crisp print.

Now that I am more comfortable with this paper, I’d like to make some prints that are good enough to frame..maybe six or so for a gallery wall??

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