Winter Prints

A few months ago – maybe September or October, I played with sunprint paper.

(I should also say that it was my friend Julie who introduced it to me a couple of years ago.)

When I played with it this last fall, I got pretty frustrated with it – I just couldn’t get it to turn out as I wanted.

Eventually it occurred to me that the reason it was never right, was because my timing was not right.
My heart and head were full at that time with gorgeous reds and browns and golds, and these beautiful blues were just not something with which I could meld .

A few days ago I remembered that I was saving it all up for another day, and I’ve since been patiently waiting for a bit of sun.

This morning when I was outside filling up our birdfeeders, I noticed a brilliant patch of blue sky.
“Oh! Sun!” I gasped.
: ) So here we are.

The first thing I did was to make a tilted platform in full sun for my prepared piece, as the sun is low in the sky, and I wanted my edges as concise as possible.

I started thinking about what I wanted to make, and gathered my materials and laid them out on a blue piece of cardstock (obviously any paper will do, I just wanted to see the effect). Flat materials are best, of course.

I cut out shapes, and gathered pines and some beautiful dock from our gardens.

When I had my arrangement as I wanted, I got my cuttingboard and my glass ready, and with the arranged blue paper nearby, I hurriedly got out a piece of sunprint paper and transferred my scene to the sun paper.

I carefully placed the glass over it (to hold the design in place) and took it outside.

As we have not crystal clear skies, I let my paper under the sun for five full minutes.

Somewhere along the way, Madeleine joined in, and started her own art.

After they sat outside for five minutes, I hurriedly brought them in and put them into a glass pan of water, and let it sit for a minute.
(Although we did several sheets, we did them one at a time.)

I took it out of the water, and placed it on the table to dry.

When they were almost finished drying, I placed a heavy book on top of them, to flatten them.

I had the idea that white glitter would be beautiful as an accent against the blues,

so we got it out and added it to our scenes as we chose.

Perfect!

A beautiful project for a winter’s day.