sun printing 101

I've long been fascinated with sun printing techniques, but had never taken the time to learn about the process first hand. It's easy to understand the appeal if you've ever seen one of these prints, the persian blue background with white impression leaves a lasting visual memory. On Sunday I finally fulfilled my desire to learn about cyanotype printing in a class hosted at Terrain.

Sun prints are created using special, light-sensitive chemicals that are then painted or soaked into paper. The paper has to be exposed under the sun in order to develop an image, and submerged in water to stop the development process. This special paper is called cyanotype paper. We used a kit to create our sun prints at Terrain, found here. 

Our fabulous teacher, Morgan, gave us the following instructions to create the sun prints you see above:

We were pretty pleased with the results of our first sun prints, and plan to frame a few of them for our bathroom. I'd like to try this same process on silk or cotton to see how the prints develop differently, and to test out new techniques. Have any of you ever sun printed before? I'd love to here suggestions, tips, and advice for taking compositions to the next level. big kiss, bekuh