Botanical Greeting Cards: Cyanotype Printing Basics

1. Introduction: Welcome to the world of Cyanotype. Create your own botanical greeting cards. Are you ready to blend art with nature in a beautiful and sustainable way? Hi, my name is Diana, and I'm a cyanotype artist. In this tutorial, we'll dive into the enchanting cyanotype process, a stunning photographic technique that captures the essence of botanical elements to create delightful greeting cards. With just a few simple materials and a touch of creativity, you learn how to harness the sun's energy to transform leaves, flowers, and other natural treasures into vibrant blueprints. Not only will you create personalized cards to share with loved ones, but you'll also connect with the beauty of nature and the joy of handmade art. Whether you're an experienced artist or a curious beginner, this tutorial will guide you step by step as you unlock the magic of Cyanotype. Get ready to celebrate creativity, sustainability, and the bountiful gifts of the natural world. Let's get started on this botanical journey. 2. Class Project: For the class project, you will create your own botanical grading cards. Use everything that you learn from the class. After you finish creating your botanical grading cards, take photos and post them in the class project section. I can't wait to see what you create. 3. Materials: Here are the following materials you will need for this class. Watercolor paper. I prefer the Canson brand and masking tape. Cyanotype kit. I use the Jaqard brand for all my cyanotype prints. A glass or acrylic frame and a cardboard and some binder clips. This will be for your contact prints. And some fresh or dried botanicals, like leaves and flowers. A ceramic or glass mixing bowl and a small measuring cup. This is for when you make your cyanotype emulsion and hockey or a flat foam brush. Cutting mat and saco knife for when we start cutting papers and stainless steel ruler and bone folder when we make the folds to make the cards. 4. Cutting & Folding Papers: In this lesson, we will use the following materials and tools. For the watercolor paper, I like to use the brand Canson, and I use the 140 pound weight, and I use stainless steel ruler, acto blade with rubber grip and bone folder to fold the paper. So for the first cut that I'm going to do, I'm going to place my paper horizontally on the mat board, going to make sure to measure it and find the middle mark. Then I'm going to carefully place my ruler right on that mark and make my straight cut. Match the corners. Make sure it's perfectly align with the other side, and then we take our bone folder and use it to fold it right in the middle. We're going to score the card multiple times until it's nicely fold and have that nice crease in the middle. And now we have two perfectly cut papers ready to be printed. 5. Cyanotype Chemistry: For this lesson, we will need the following materials and tools. Before we begin, let's prep our working area. Make sure to cover your table with old newspaper or use paper grocery bags. This will help protect your surface from any spills once we start making our solution. Most importantly, make sure to turn off all lights in the room and only allow a small amount of indirect light so we can still see while we make our solution. Canatype chemistry are sensitive to light, and we don't want to expose our papers once we sensitize them. And I'll pour a small amount into the cup. So the amount of solution that we will use will vary on the number of papers that we coat. For this one, I'm only going to coke a couple of cards, so I will only need a small amount of mixture. Next, we have this part B, which is the Berg ammonium citrate. We'll measure it same equal measurement as part A. And then we'll pour it into the bowl. And this is our solution. And now I'll take my hockey brush, my flat brush, and mix it together. And there you go. And there's our cyanotype emulsion. We will now cot our papers with the cyanotype emulsion. By using a hockey brush or any flat brush, you can apply the cyanotype emulsion onto the paper. There are many ways to do this and you can also get as creative as you want. Or you can start with something simple like this one. You can even use a flat sponge to coat the entire paper evenly with emulsion. For this next one, we will use a masking tape to create a frame with a nice clean edge. Once you're done, coating all your papers, make sure to take all your cards and let them dry in a dark room and not exposed to any kind of light. 6. Design & Exposure: And Here's what you will need for this lesson. Welcome to the fun part of the class, creating greeting card designs. Our botanicals are ready to come out of their pages and create beautiful greeting card designs. For this step, it's very important that you do it on a sunny forecast as we will move to the next step, which is exposure. Immediately after we finish arranging our botanicals. Don't forget to keep your sensitized cards away from direct exposure to light. Okay, so the first thing we need to do is to lay out all our pressed botanicals, so it's easier for us to find the right botanical that we will use to design our greeting cards. Then we have our sensitized card and our picture frame. First thing we need to do is remove the glass part of the frame, and then we take our sensitized card and lay it flat on the back end of the frame. And then we will decide which botanical that we want to use to create our first design. This could be anything that you want to do. If you want to do a single design, a simple design or multiple variations or combinations of different botanicals. Now that I've decided that I'm going to go for a simple design, I'm going to place my glass, part of the frame and put it over the card and the botanical. Then I will secure it with my binder clips. And I'll put it on each side to make sure that the botanical is intact, and it doesn't move once we take it outside and expose it. Okay, so I'm outside my house with my print, and I will leave this exposed for probably 5-7 minutes, and it will be ready to be developed. Also, make sure to set your timer so you won't forget about your print. Okay, so our print has been exposed and now ready to soak into the water bath. 7. Development: So for this lesson, the only materials that you will need are your exposed prints, a tray or a kitchen sink with water and room temperature, and some old kitchen towels that you will need to dry out your prints. Okay, so our kitchen sink is ready, and we're gonna submerge the print into the water bath. And we're going to move it around and rinse off all that chemicals, the emulsion that was not exposed. We're gonna keep doing this until all that yellow residue is completely removed. And what's left is just purely white on the negative, which is the botanical part. We're gonna leave this print in the water bath for a minute or so. Okay, so this print is ready to come out of the water bath. We're going to place it on top of the kitchen towel, and we're going to remove all that excess water that is sitting on top of the paper by taking another kitchen towel and carefully lot all that excess water. And continue to do that until all that water is gone and absorbed by the kitchen towel. Now, there are two ways that we can dry our prints. One is simply leaving it dry flat on the kitchen towel or hang it up with clothespin on a line like a shirt. 8. Class Summary : We have reached the end of our class, but before we stop here, let's do a quick recap of what we have learned. We have learned how to properly cut and fold our papers. We learn how to create our cyanotype chemistry. We use our press botanicals and create designs, and we learn about the process of exposure and development. Thank you for watching my class. I hope this class has sparked a lasting interest in the cyanotype process and that you continue exploring and experimenting with this beautiful art form. Don't forget to have fun and get creative with this process. Also, please share photos of your final botanical greeting cards in our class project section. And if you would like to try other creative and fun Siena type projects, please check out my other classes here on Skillshare. Thank you so much. I welcome any feedback and questions you might have. Please share them in the discussion section. Thank you. M.