I Made Sun Prints with Turmeric from My Kitchen (So Easy!)

Did you know you can make beautiful sun prints using turmeric? Let me show you exactly how, it's easier than you think. Turmeric sun prints. And this is what we're making today. Rubbing alcohol pulls the natural yellow pigment from turmeric, which we use to coat the paper and turmeric is sensitive to ultraviolet light. So the uncovered areas fade in the sun and the flowers act like a stencil stencil, blocking that light and preserving the darker pigment underneath. So that's going to leave these detailed shapes. It's a simple, easy recipe. Let's get started. To make these sun prints, you're going to use a paper that's a little bit thicker than computer paper. I really like using watercolor paper. This is going to take on a lot of water and computer paper will just kind of melt away on you. think thick and sturdy cardboard, watercolor paper, anything that you have in your stash that's gonna have some substance to it, you're also gonna need some turmeric you can find that at the grocery store, it's just a spice and you're gonna need some alcohol, you don't need the 99%, you can just get the, I think it's 51% and 70, they all work fine and you're also going to need a mason jar and a coffee filter and a measuring spoon this is a really simple recipe, so what you want to do is you're going to take your alcohol, this is a brand new bottle and it's four to one, four parts alcohol to one part turmeric and this is a tablespoon so we're going to do four tablespoons two, three, four, to one tablespoon of turmeric I keep this in my craft room so it doesn't matter if we're kind of contaminating with a little bit of alcohol in here and it doesn't have to be completely exact but four to one is a good mixture you want to probably when you start working with turmeric wear some gloves because it will really stain your hands we're going to mix this together. And then we're going to let it sit for about five minutes, we want that pigment in the turmeric to really break down and dissolve into that alcohol before we put it through into the mason jar with the coffee filter to filter it out. So we're going to leave this for about 10 minutes. And we'll be back. It's been 10 minutes, I've just got a mason jar, a coffee filter, I put elastic around it you want to put drain it through this because turmeric is grainy it's got texture to it um and we don't want that on our paper so we want it nice and smooth so we're just going to put it through the strainer it's going to take a few minutes i actually have a little bit of turmeric just left in here we're not going to waste it we'll pour a little bit more of alcohol in here, swish it around. There we go. And we're just going to let this drain through the coffee filter and we're going to have this lovely yellow turmeric solution at the bottom. It's all drained through, we're going to put our gloves on or you're going to have yellow fingers. And we're going to remove the coffee filter and the elastic, we can give it a little squeeze, get all of the good stuff out and set this aside actually and dry it and probably use it again and just add more alcohol to it it'll probably still be lots of pigment in there so now what we want to do is we need our paper i've got some watercolor paper cut out in different sizes i'm going to do some bookmarks i'm going to do some smaller ones just so we can see how they all turn out i'm going to do a bookmark and this one first we'll put the other ones aside now there is a little trick to applying the turmeric on your paper you want to not have it really thick you just want a light coat and you want to make sure you're going in the same direction so just to dip your paintbrush in it and paint it on going in the same direction and you don't want to go over it a bunch of times that's good i've just done three swipes that's all you need and then we're going to do one right down i'm kind of leaving a border on these i think it looks nice one swipe set this aside now these are photo sensitive to light so i have quite a bit of light here in the studio so i'm gonna take these now and put them in a darker space maybe underneath my table would be perfect uh i'm gonna paint the rest of these and then you wanna let them dry completely but you don't want them in it doesn't have to be a completely dark room but don't have them in front of a window where it's sunny or this is going to start to fade and it's not going to work as well so we're going to put these underneath the table and we'll be back as soon as all of these are dry it might take 15 or 20 minutes okay we're gonna keep it kind of dark in here so these don't start to turn on us we have to work kind of quickly these are completely dry it took about 20 minutes uh i have this huge book that i picked up at the thrift store and it is fabulous for pressing flowers i put a bunch of flowers in here the other day didn't mark the pages that they were in so we're just going to try to find them you just want to place your flowers exactly where you want them on your print just like that you want to use uh something that's flat you don't want anything that's kind of beveled or kind of has a hump in it because the light's going to be able to get underneath it and it's not going to work properly so use some fresh pressed flowers or i'm gonna have to do this so i can find these bear with me while i find all of these this is this is how i craft around here guys oh look at this one fabulous let's put this one right here we've got a leaf oh we've got some ferns these are gorgeous set these here we've got some leaves and you can see how these are lying right flat on the uh paper so that's going to give it the best chance to do a really good print oh here we go queen anne's lace got some beautiful queen anne's lace okay that's perfect now what you want to do i had some uh picture frames and you want the glass and a piece of cardboard that you can put on the cardboard just like this like this and then you're gonna put the glass on top of it and you want it nice and flat i like to use a little clip and secure everything in there tight and i'm just going to keep going i have another piece of glass and cardboard put this one here once we get these on here you do not want them moving on the paper if you do you're going to have your print not turn out well and not be nice and crisp making sure when you're putting your clips on you're not going into the paper because it will transfer on it also and then i have a big frame i'm going to be really careful this is a big piece of glass and let's put this one here and this one here and then what we want to do once we've got these all put together we're going to take these outside and we're going to put them in the sun and we're probably going to leave them for three or four hours it just kind of depends on how sunny it is when i started this project this morning it was really nice and sunny and now our sun has kind of gone down a little bit just means that i'll have to leave it outside a little bit longer but these are ready now they're nice and secure we're going to take these outside and put them in the sun turmeric contains a natural pigment that's sensitive to sunlight the exposed areas are going to fade while the covered areas are going to stay darker and create that rich beautiful print and we are back and hopefully we have some beautiful sun prints this was out in the sun it actually came out and was wonderful for a few hours so they've been outside for three hours and now we're going to take these apart and see what we have take the clip off be really careful with the glass the dried flowers yeah that worked oh look at how vibrant this one was it's great see what this one looks like i'm really excited to see this big leaf and how it turned out isn't that wonderful we can use these again for another project let's see what the leaf did oh and it was really vibrant also this is such a fun technique that you can do with your kids too and uh they'll be amazed at the outcome of just using some leaves and some turmeric this one came off with the leaf let's see what this one looks like oh yes so beautiful and these are great for junk journals mixed media paper crafts greeting cards so many possibilities and i think this is going to be my favorite i'm a big fan of ferns oh yeah love okay so what we're going to do next is these need to be neutralized so i have a dish of warm water uh two cups of warm water and we're gonna use some baking soda we're gonna put in two tablespoons of baking soda into the water take your fingers get it in there mix it all up we're going to get some paper towel right here and we're going to take each one in and let it sit for about 30 seconds that's just going to stop everything from going any further drip all of the water off of it best that you can and then just lay it on the paper towel so i'm going to go through and we're going to soak all of these for 30 seconds get them laid on the paper towel And we'll be back. These have all been rinsed in the baking soda, baking soda, baking soda water, that's a must you have to do that. Now what we need to do now is just let them lay flat and dry completely. But you can see as they're drying, how the color has changed and went from a dark yellow to like almost a rust color. So magical. And I love this. If you have a chance and you have some turmeric in your cupboard you need to give this a try and there you have your turmeric sun prints so easy to do you can see how it colors the back that deep rich red too now one little tip these are not color fast they are um uv the uv when it hits it they're still gonna fade so if you have a print that you've made that you really love there's no way of really keeping it from fading over time especially if you hang it in a frame and put it in front of a window where there's sunlight tip take a photocopy of it i love this one if i take a photocopy of it it's going to keep those rich colors i'm going to have a copy of it and it will always stay that way as if this one over time is going to fade so i hope you enjoyed this tutorial uh if you love this video i'm sure you're really gonna love the next one so we'll see you over there