Cyanotypes

So for the past few days, much to Lilly's dismay, I've been back in my home state of New Hampshire (aka - the best state in America, just sayin) and while home yesterday I made some cyanotypes. Cyanotypes are basically contact prints that are blue in color. Personally I like them because they're one of the few photographic processes (outside the digital world) that are easy to accomplish at home. There's no fancy equipment or anything really necessary. 

Now I had originally started this task because I wanted to see how it would hold up on canvas (more on that in a bit), but I mixed up more chemicals then I really needed so I did a handful of paper prints as well. It was kind of cloudy out today, and after doing the canvas prints I had some stuff I needed to do, so I let the paper prints sit by the sliding glass doors to the porch all day in the hopes that they'd get enough sun. Hindsight 20/20, I should've just left them outside all day since it was so low on sunlight in my backyard (I did with one of them, and it had the best deep blue color of the bunch). Oh well. Still not to shabby for the most part :)

So fun fact: I got 8 canvases this weekend to experiment on. Originally I just got 4 little 4x4 inch canvases from Michael's (they were on sale and totaled at less than $5!), but then when I was in the Christmas Tree Shop later that day they had some cheap canvases of a more normal size, so I picked up a few more. The cyanotype chemicals did not like the little canvases, they wouldn't soak in and just repelled and balled up on top of the canvas. The cheaper canvases it took to much better though, it probably has to do with the way the canvases were pre-primed and whatnot, I suppose there will have to be more experiments there....not that I really mind at all :)

Some of these will be going on the walls once I get them back down to the apartment. The rest I'll throw up on Etsy, so check out my shop! :)