I bought some Lumi Inkodye supplies so that we could experiment with making sun prints, they just got here the other day.

So yesterday we did our first experiments with some red and blue dye, just to see what works and what doesn’t. We cut up some stars and stripes, and I got out my George Washington and lobster cookie cutters for some truly patriotic designs (H cut up the yarn because cutting up yarn is her favorite).

It was very cool to watch the progress on these, they developed really quickly. We painted some white fabric squares (from a leftover sheet from the tent we made) and added our collected items in our dark dining room, then I ran them out one at a time to the backyard to get the full sun exposure. 

The paint starts out light gray (lighter than this) and then very quickly develops.

H thought this was great, but our cookie cutters and yarn didn’t show up very well. I’d hoped maybe the cookie cutters would cast a thicker shadow to print a shape, but they don’t. Lesson learned, we need more opaque shapes next time!

But she loved seeing the colors appear, she told me all about it. 

Next time we do this we’ll plan ahead and get some really good shapes ready. This was an impromptu attempt, just to see what the dye would do. So cool!