Victory Gardens for Bees: Cyanotypes in Bastian Square: Part 2

I was thrilled to see it was a glorious day to make cyanotype prints with folks from hcma in Victoria. It was so lovely to see the pride flags fluttering in the ocean breeze.

Although they irk me because they often omit bee friendly flowers, the hanging baskets do create a pleasing spectacle, especially en masse.

I set up for the workshop outside the hcma office and did a few test prints to prepare. I had snipped a few asparagus fronds from my friend Rhona's garden to make a print. The flowers were dry and sparse, but I did get a few stragglers in the print.

Here's what the print looked like after 15 minutes, just before I washed it.

And here's the finished print. You can see the flowers pressed quite flat and they worked well for the process.

This is the kit I used to prep the watercolour paper. It ships out of Longview, Alberta. You can find it at the camera store in Market Square in Victoria. The chemicals come as a powder. You add water to each jar and then mix the two chemicals just before you prepare the sheets. I prepared several sheets of heavy watercolour paper ahead of time in a darkened room, so it could soak into the paper and dry. I hand painted the chemicals onto different sizes of sheets, using two techniques--making a circle or oval in the centre, or covering the entire sheet. The participants chose their plants and then picked the papers to use.

We were lucky there were some picnic tables outside the office we could use to make the prints. We put the plants on the prepared paper in the shade, then put the glass on top and exposed it to the light on the sunny table.