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