Experimenting with Wet Cyan Printing

I have just started my experimenting with wet cyan printing. Here is just a mini tutorial, but much more information will be coming soon.

It’s real easy to get started by purchasing these pretreated fabric sheets. You can buy them through Amazon, Dharma Trading, or other online stores. They are a bit pricey, but I wanted to try them before I invested in the solution. I had so much fun doing this that I did buy the solution and will be preparing my fabric shortly.

Once the fabric is prepared or if you buy it already pretreated, place it on a surface. I’m using glass, but it can be foam core or anything that’s sturdy. Here are the directions:

  • Spritz the surface with water or other liquid (I’ll talk about the other in a future post).
  • Put the fabric on your surface.
  • Place your botanicals or other masks on the fabric.
  • Spritz the fabric with water or other liquid.
  • Cover with glass.
  • Take it out to the sun.

 

This is not an exact science. Exposure time really depends on the temperature, sun or no sun, and what you are expecting. For this one I let it set out for 30 minutes.

This is how it looked when I removed the botanicals and the glass. So pretty, but it will not stay like that.

 

Now the fabric goes into water for five minutes or so.  Change out the water a couple times. When the water is clear, hang it to dry.  Here is the finished piece. It’s pretty, but the green and yellow are gone!

 

Here is a piece with leaves. Look at all the water spots I got! I really love the effect.

In this last one I got these neat sparkles. They are from sprinkling some dry soda ash on top of the fabric before spritzing. I’ll be doing more of that for sure.

This print is made using a fabric stencil.

And this one I used a bit too much soda ash, and maybe not enough time. But the more I look at it, the more I like it!

If you are on instagram, search #wetcyan and you will see some lovely pieces. Online all you need to do is search wetcyan and you’ll see all kinds of beautiful prints on fabric and paper. I just recently found out that Krista McCurdy created this technique using paper. You can check out her tutorial here. I came to this technique from the beautiful work of Sue Reno and Leslie Riley.

I’m just getting started! I’ll be posting more results soon. I’m linking up with Off The Wall Friday. Check out all of the inspiration there.

Thanks for dropping by.