Blogging for Thor: It's Hammer Time

The countdown begins! Rather arbitrarily, I do admit. My work for the Community Supported Arts grant is due on May 18th, in just 10 days. It isn't that I can't do math, by the way, I'm just not counting the last 40 minutes of today as a day. So in 10 days, I must have thirty parchment prints mounted on wood, along with twenty pieces of cyanotype jewelry.

I decided that, after talking with a lot of other artists, I was going to compromise on the issue of how to fasten down the parchment. My current plan is to do a third of the parchments with brass nails, a third with steel nails and a third with the liquid hide glue I got from Woodcraft. Liquid hide glue, by the way, stinks horribly. It does appear to be holding a stable, very strong bond, though. It was recommended by the tannery that provides my parchment. It's doing far, far better than the E6000 or the Yes! Paste, both of which gave up within days.

So where do I stand, Spiders? Today I finished mounting and putting hardware onto 17 of the 30 parchment prints. I want to give the hide glue test piece a bit more time to see if I want to reserve 10 of those as glue-only, nail-free presentations. I finished 10 mounts with steel nails and 7 with brass nails. There's 13 prints waiting under a stack of encyclopedias, all ready to go. I'll assemble the other 3 brass-nails prints tomorrow.

The jewelry is almost finished, too. I have 1 set of earrings, 7 rings, 3 metal pendants and 9 wooden pendants. The last of the metal pendants and 5 of the rings are waiting for resin, which I'll probably be pouring tonight, after I finish this blog post.

In total, I have completed 62% of the project. The rest is all very close to the finishing stage. My only remaining concern is any mistakes in assembly or finishing that crop up. Today I managed to hammer one of the steel nails down wrong, and I may have to scrap that mount. Fortunately, I have extra wood and enough time to replace the piece. Of double fortune, it wasn't one of the best prints. So, not a terrible deal. Just annoying. I might end up replacing it with an extra piece of jewelry, assuming I can find the stash of first-run wooden cyanotype pendants I made. The second run, currently strung, is not as dark blue. The third run, now bleaching, was too blue. There's an unfortunately high failure rate with the wet-printed wooden pendants and tags. I can't figure out exactly why. I'm guessing that it's to do with the "wet" part of wet-printing.

Thanks to a lovely overcast sky, I was also able to document everything that I've finished so far. My lovely Flickr gallery grows as I near project completion! Y'all should check it out, Spiders!

My last bit of work will be ordering more burlap bags, getting some better raffia stuffing (this stuff is too long and stringy!) and then finish the insert that I'll be handing out. It should be the work of a day to stuff everything once it's done.

I'm so excited, Spiders. My first grant, and I'm coming in way under budget and right on schedule! I'll be so happy to finish this project, even though it's been very fun.

Blogging for Thor: Wooden Wonders

Newest of my Osage Orange mounts

Tomorrow I'm expecting a new shipment of wood from Kansas! The same eBay seller whose been providing me with osage orange, as discussed recently, was able to find a branch large enough to cut me 30 slices between 4x5 and 5x5 inches, all the slices just under an inch thick. These 30 pieces, shipping included, cost me $4.67 each.

Isn't it great that the best way to present my work for the CSA Grant Program was also the cheapest way? That almost never happens, Spiders! I just need to get the wood, cut parchment to the proper size and shape for each one, print an image on each of the 30 pieces and then epoxy the prints into place once they've dried. It should take about a week total, maybe two depending on weather.

The jewelry half of my CSA project is also going well. I've got a bunch of parchment sized and ready to coat (which I'll be doing tonight), then it can be exposed. Since the jewelry parchments are tiny, I can expose a lot of them at once and dry a lot of them at once. I'm hoping to get at least 10 of the jewelry parchments printed and drying this weekend, actually.

Considering the lovely appearance of the last two wood-mounted prints, I'm looking forward to seeing thirty of them all spread out. Should be pretty impressive!!

Blogging for the Baron: Paper Jewels

Tracing out sizes for parchment cyanotype blanks

I've been out of it, Spiders. Since Christmas, I have entirely lost track of time. My dog became increasingly ill after some surgery and had to be put to sleep to keep him comfortable. I came down with one of the nastiest colds I ever remember, right about the same time. This cough syrup is messing me up worse than I figured. I even missed the Folded Paper Project for the first time. Basically, I've just been all kinds of messed up.

Still, there has been some progress. I've completed two more of my cyanotype parchment jewelry pieces: a ring and a pendant.

For this week's update, I'm going to go through the process step-by-step. It'll be fun! Trust me!

The first step is the "negative" which, in this case, is made by sticking a small leaf onto a piece of clear packing tape. I use the tape because it works great for when I'm dealing with bones (which are anything but flat) or felt, or anything else that doesn't lend itself to simple contact-printing under glass. When dealing with very small leaves and plants, it's also handy to keep them in place and keep track of them. It lets me arrange roots, small leaflets and even multiple tiny leaves easily as well. So, stick all your plant material onto the packing tape. For longer shelf life of your negatives, you can double-layer the tape, stick-to-stick, so that they're 'sealed'. I don't do this, because I'm alright discarding the negatives after a few uses. I'd rather find new material than keep using the same leaves over and over. Still, it's an option. If you don't seal the tape-negative somehow, it will accumulate dust, debris and gunk.

Next, stick or place your tape-negative onto your coated parchment. I've discussed the actual process of coating in some detail, so I won't go into it here. You could, in theory, use another sturdy material to make similar pieces. Heavy paper, or even stiff cloth could be glued down and covered with a protective layer. I use the parchment because, well, it's kind of my thing, ya know, Spiders? Dead stuff, necrography, etc. This last bit is very important: do not trim down the material yet. You want to leave extra space around the final border of your print so that you can trim it to fit exactly into whatever object you're going to be placing it in. Parchment and paper both deform and shrink a bit when soaked, so be mindful. Do all your trimming and sizing at the end.

Once you've got the tape-negative in place on your material, place it in a frame. I actually have a nice itty-bitty 4x5 contact frame that I'm using for this, but you can use any of the jury-rigged contact frames that I've demonstrated before, or just a picture frame. Whatever works! Then leave the frame out in sunlight for a complete exposure. I'm extremely lax with this. Due to the weak sunlight in the winter months, I tend to set my exposures out the night before and collect them in the afternoon. That gives them a good 6 or 8 hours of exposure. When you're just doing photograms, its almost impossible to over-expose. If you were trying to print image negatives (which is an option!) then you'd want to go with a shorter, more controlled exposure.

Cyanotype Parchment Pendant

After the exposure is done, just remove the tape-negative and coated material from the frame. Unstick the tape negative, if necessary, and drop your prints in the wash. For me, considering the size, I don't really wash the prints. I let them soak in a Dixie cup full of water for a few hours. They're done within 2-3 hours, tops.

The nice thing about these prints being so small is that it's fairly feasible to speed up the drying process for them with a hair dryer. Keeping them from flying all across the room while doing so? That's a bit harder. I stick 'em in place with a push-pin driven through one corner (which will get cut off anyway). At this point, you're really done with the photography portion of the exercise.

Cyanotype Parchment Ring

Now all you need to do is trim off the excess material, getting down to a size that fits exactly into your setting. Of all the steps, I find this the most annoying, especially for rounded shapes. It drives me nuts, but some of y'all may have really awesome ideas for cutting down on the annoyance. Lemme know if you do! I recommend using paper templates to ensure you don't over-trim your finished prints. That's sad when it happens, because you can't un-snip a cut print.

I recommend a silicone epoxy like E6000 for glueing parchment to metal, but if you decided to go with paper, cloth or some other material, use whatever bonds best. E6000 is pretty great overall, but it can be quite messy, fume-y and a little toxic. Use with care.

That's really it. You just make your tiny cyanotype, cut it to fit the jewelry object, glue it in place, and you're done. You can go further, with things like fixing a glass bezel in place as a protective layer, or pouring resin on top to seal things up, but I'm just starting experiments with that. They're totally optional. Parchment is a very sturdy material, and the cyanotype process is extremely archival. Items made this way, even without a protective coating, should last for decades.

Have fun, my Spiders!

Blogging for Balthazar: Cyanotypes go Metal!

First Cyanotype Parchment Ring

It's a bit after Christmas, so let's celebrate with a new blog post! Yes, I took some time off for the holiday, and I just haven't really been mentally up to blogging. My dog's still not doing well after his surgery, and the holidays have been a bit hectic even aside from that. Plus, I think my family may have infected me with another bloody plague. I'm certainly coughing more than I should be.

Anyway, I know you're way more interested in photographic insanity than my biographical drama, Spiders. Let's get down to it.

Troy, one of the awesome guys who runs the Flaming Chicken Studio here in town, decided to put together a last-minute Holiday Art Sale. It went really well, despite the late date and some other events happening on the same day. In getting ready for it, I was working on some more of my attempts at making cyanotypes into practical art. The latest version of this has been cyanotype jewelry. Now, making my small cyanotype bones into jewelry has still proved too difficult for me to manage. I lack the equipment and skills to efficiently build bases, settings and findings. I was able to find another way, however.

Tracing paper templates to make the parchment blanks

I combined a ready-made, adjustable ring base with one of my cyanotype parchment prints. Using a bit of E6000 silicone epoxy, I just attached a tiny print onto the ring base, creating a wearable cyanotype. The process could use some improvements, like some kind of protection against scratching the print itself, but it works on a basic level.

After that success, I've gotten the supplies for further experiments. One of the biggest challenges is simply cutting the right size piece of parchment. It shrinks and expands slightly during the washing and drying of the print, so getting the cut parchment to fit exactly into a ring or pendant isn't easy. I'm hoping for some good results with this batch!

Paper blanks ready for coating!

Even better? This research may actually fund itself. If it goes well, I might even start using my Etsy store! Wouldn't that be crazy?

I don't know if I'll try to expose all of these, but I do want to get started right away. In the dead of winter, I don't have a lot of choices for floral samples. I might even print out some very small negatives on transparency or vellum paper and see if I can do some cyanotype jewelry with photographs instead of photograms. Wouldn't that be novel, Spiders? Actually using a camera?

Blogging for Thor: Not Quite Red

Pokeberry (with alcohol) + Turmeric

Well, Spiders, my experiment to create a simple red anthotype dye hasn't yet succeeded. Pokeberry and turmeric together create a bright, vibrant orange. But, ya know what, so does Sandalwood. I'm hoping that I can do some further tests and see if maybe I can combine orange and magenta to get a red, since I have a lot of oranges. Or maybe just different proportions of yellow and magenta? I might also try using pure pokeberry juice instead of diluted pokeberry. This test was pokeberry juice diluted with alcohol.

Either way, it deserves further experimentation.

On another note, I've begun purchasing the materials to turn my Cyanotags and Cyanobones into wearable art. I've finished one pendant necklace, and I've got the materials for a bracelet. The rings and pendants... actually, tonight I talked with Aspen Hochalter and she suggested trying to find a local metalsmith to work with. That's a really cool idea, because it means I double my client base by including the metalsmith's. And it builds professional relationships, which is also nice. It does mean I have to share the profits, though, but I'm fairly ok with that.

More soon, Spiders!

Blogging for Crom Cruach: Woodworking

Wet-Printed Cyanotag

Wouldn't it be fun, Spiders, if I could say that I'd intentionally delayed this week's blog for Halloween? That isn't what happened. I was just hanging out with friends last night and didn't get to blogging until today. I'm pretty much incapable of writing these blogs during the day, so they're always at night.

Oh well! I'm writing today about something I've been working on for a while, and really have only just started getting really nice results from. Printing cyanotypes on wood isn't terribly easy. If you coat the wood with a sealant, like gesso or primer, it works pretty well. That covers up the grain, though, and makes the final result look fairly flat. It takes away the character of the wood, and leaves you with something that might as well be printed on any other boring, flat surface.

I picked up two packs of these small wooden tags last time I was out shopping for craft supplies, about the time I received my turtle bones. I've been working on the two experiments concurrently, and actually encountered many of the same difficulties in both situations. Just like my problems with the turtle bones, the wood does not like to accept cyanotype chemistry very well. The chemistry starts turning blue as soon as it starts to dry, eventually becoming so exposed that it's useless. Wood is actually even more annoying, because I've been able to get decent results on bone with the mysteriously pre-exposed material. Not so with the wooden tags. They just don't print anything if they've turned blue. At best, I was able to get a blue-on-blue image that is... interesting, but not very visible.

Blue-on-blue dry printed tag

The other downside to wood is that the washing time is very long. Since the chemistry soaks into the wood deeply, it also takes quite a long time to wash back out. I've started just letting the tags soak in water for a few hours before oxidizing them with hydrogen peroxide, then drying them in the toaster oven. Another strike against wood is that, unlike bone, it can't be fully bleached. Even hours of soaking in a strong borax or soda ash solution retains a significant amount of blue, too much to print over. It's rather depressing, since that means each bad result is a wasted tag, instead of just wasted time. Good thing the tags themselves are cheap!

My current solution to the problems presented by the wooden tags, which seems to be working, is to do wet-printing. I had actually never tried this before, Spiders, and I was very excited to see that it works! Wet-printing a cyanotype is when you don't allow the chemistry to dry before you expose it to light. I brush on a coat of chemistry, give it a few seconds to soak in, then go ahead and contact print it. Put the leaves directly onto the fresh chemistry, stick it into the printing frame (two sheets of glass, clipped together with office clamps) and set it in the sun.

Fuzzy, low-contrast dry printed tag

Wet-printing seems to have some side-effects, like uneven development, but so far I'm enjoying the results quite a bit. I'm planning to make a big push and develop a bunch of these little things. The only problem is a lack of small leaves and plants, understandable given the current season. I might even try printing a 35mm negative.. though I wonder if the wet chemistry may bleach the negative... Obviously, I'll have to test that on a negative I'm not a big fan of, or use a digital negative.

Just like the turtle shell prints, I'm making these wood prints with the intention of eventually stringing them as wearable art. The double-holed tags might make nice bracelets. Some of the single-hole tags are sized right for pendants, or even earrings. Could be fun stuff.