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Home » art » Sun Prints – Easy and Stylish Summer DIY Art (+ how to fake floating frames)

Sun Prints – Easy and Stylish Summer DIY Art (+ how to fake floating frames)

July 3, 2010 Brittany Bailey 7 Comments

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A few years ago while I was trying to entertain my toddler, we made sun prints on a hot summer day.

What! You’ve never heard of sunprints? Well, you really need to get your crafty hands on this hot product. Visit the Sunprints.org website to see all the details, plus a gallery of sunprint artwork!

Okay, don’t feel bad. I never saw it either until I happened upon this pack at our art museum gift shop. I bought some in the hopes of filling an hour of some weekday while waiting patiently for my hubby to come home.

As nature lovers, we collected grass, leaves, and even weeds from our yard. Then we had a blast laying the leaves on top of the sunprint paper. After 2-5 minutes of exposure, we dipped the paper in cold water. It was fun watching the paper turn blue and the silhouetted images appear before our eyes. (Okay, I won’t pretend that we didn’t enjoy playing in the bucket of cool water too!)

Several of them turned out so nice that I decided to frame them as art. Not only did I like the graphic look of the images, but the soft blue colors really appealed to me. I became so attached to the colors in the artwork that we painted our whole master bedroom the light color of the sunprints.

 

 Mimosa tree

 

Clover

 

Some weed in our garden

I found it a bit difficult to find the perfect square floating frames. Instead, I found regular square frames at Target for $19.99 a piece, and decided to buy them on the spot.  When I got home I had a brilliant idea on how to fake the floating glass frame look.

After we painted the room, I took some mat board and rolled the wall color on the mats. (It works best to use a mat that is somewhat close to the color of your walls.)

When the boards dried, I used my logan mat cutter and created custom mats.

Can you tell they are matted vs. floating? Maybe if you look close, otherwise, they appear to float in the frame!

So, you are accomplished at hanging three pictures so they are equal distance and the same height, right? If not, check back for my post on how to hang pictures to perfection.

 

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art, arts and craft, blue, Crafts, floating frame, framing, kids art, sunprints

Comments

  1. - Brittany says

    December 22, 2010 at 10:35 pm

    Amy, I'm embarrassed to say that I have not written the hanging your pictures straight post yet, but look for it in 2011!

    Reply
  2. Amy says

    December 22, 2010 at 6:46 pm

    Hi!
    I've never heard of sunprints but I love the look of your project. Thanks for the great intro. Quick question, did you ever write up how to hang pix?

    Reply
  3. Sunprint Kit says

    December 4, 2010 at 12:50 pm

    Hello Brittany! Thanks for your interest in Sunprints, you can check out some more ideas and activities over at http://www.sunprints.org. Happy printing!

    Reply
  4. idesign says

    July 11, 2010 at 10:33 am

    where has this been all my life! i had no idea these existed, thanks for the tip, cant wait to try this!

    -Jackie
    http://jaclyndesigns.blogspot.com/

    Reply
  5. - Brittany says

    July 4, 2010 at 1:34 pm

    Alana, have you seen the giant sheets of sunpaper they have now! 24" x 36"! Check them out at: sunprints.org. I bet you could find all kinds of cool projects to do with those.

    Reply
  6. Alanamous says

    July 4, 2010 at 12:14 pm

    I LOVE sunprints. I used them in college to emphasize the light variations from the curves of my handblown clear glass vases. The dark shadows cast from the thickened glass at the tighter curves contrasted nicely with the lighter shadows at the thinner softer curves in the glass. I also had some frosted and clear glass which I placed on the same papers to create varying shades of blue vases on my finished page.

    Reply

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Hi, I'm Brittany aka Pretty Handy Girl. I like the smell of coffee and sawdust in the morning. I live to break stereotypes and empower you to take on your own DIY project.

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