Deep Indigo Blue

Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity! 

I came across these pressed lavender stems in one of my pressing books. They were delicate and fragile and kept their color so well. They photographed so beautifully that this post could stop right here at the first photo....but I really wanted to make a sun print. 

The problems was....I was out of pretreated paper....but I did have had an envelope of smaller scraps that I keep on hand for printing bookmarks. 

I placed the stems on one of the scraps...clipped on a piece of glass and set it on the front walkway....the only place I had direct sun at the time.

Then I got busy with other things and forgot about it until Paul reminded me. After what was at least an hour I had a deep indigo blue.....almost black.

The flowers had some dimension...so didn't lay completely flat on the paper under the glass leaving a bit of a shadow. Shadows often enhance an image.

I'm quite tickled with the print and learned a few lessons:

Process some prints a little longer!

Always have pretreated papers on hand.

Don't forget about the envelope of scraps!

The closeup shadowy detail is really special....almost etherial!

I'm smitten with this deep indigo blue print...I'll have to do something special with it. 

I did treat more papers in the garage. It's not a pretty process...but it's a necessary part of the process. And I made more blotted paper and coated a book page...stay tuned!