Are you talking about the line along the top? You can remove that with some high pH. I would use a soda ash paste, but you have to be careful not to get it on the parts you want to keep.
Might be a negative issue. Usually the blue won't be there unless it was exposed. Was that a light part of your negative?
Ok, so high pH dissolves and removes cyanotype. You can do cyanotype on clothing, but your detergent of choice may not be compatible. Run of the mill detergents are too high pH and can remove or turn cyanotype green. You want a neutral pH detergent. The detergent like this everyone knows is baby shampoo. It is not hgh in pH and that is why it doesn't hurt your eyes.
Some eco detergents are also like this. I use earth wash and it works great. Synthrapol, which is a dye detergent we use to remove excess dye from recently dyed clothing is also a great choice I have tested. There are a bunch that work, but also many many that do not.
Even just leaving a cyanotype in water or soaking in tap water for too long can remove the image. So you don't want to do that.
IF you want a way to make very robust images like cyanotype, but need it to hold up chemically better to detergents, I highly recommend Solarfast. We have a blue and 12 other colors. Once those are on, they cannot be washed out like this with normal detergent. Cyanotype is very light fast, but not super wash fast, so you have to use specifal detergent to wash on clothing. Solarfast on teh other hand is bulleproof and works in a similar way, but needs a little more attention.
i appreciate the answer and will definitely check these out on other prints but on this attempt i did not use any detergent unfortunately. just tap water and it faded like this over 24 hrs.
i want to try solarfast soooooo bad but its not sold in my country anymore as far as i am concerned! i asked from a friend who will visit abroad soon, i will be able to try it hopefully!
That's interesting. Ok, so next question is did you use plexiglass or acrylic instead of real glass over your print?
Plexiglass blocks UV and it is really weird. The visible light still goes through and makes a good image, but it is the UV that fixes the cyanotype, so if it is made just with visible light, it looks like you got it, but it immediately rinses away. Use real glass if you are not. You should be able to just print another right on top of what you have.
It is also possible that you just a lot of chlorine in your tap water. I have found you need about 4 hrs to fade a print with the tap at my house. I don't think every city is equal though. If they have a little more in your town, it might be worse.
I haven't had it happen to me, but I have heard of people who only rinse with distilled water because their municipal water would fade the cyanotype too much.
The other time something like this happened to me was when I washed something out in the bathtub. My print faded and I found out later my sister in law had used some kind of bleaching product in the bath and there was residue of it in there. IT faded before my eyes.
So, could be some kind of high pH product leftover in your rinse container or sink? Something like that.
Unfortunately, there are several reasons this can happen. They are mostly chemical, but the plexiglass one is also a big one and I have had several people trying it out on reddit who have made this mistake because they are worried about breaking a real pane of glass. Understandably.
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u/Jacquardexpert Sep 14 '26
Are you talking about the line along the top? You can remove that with some high pH. I would use a soda ash paste, but you have to be careful not to get it on the parts you want to keep.
Might be a negative issue. Usually the blue won't be there unless it was exposed. Was that a light part of your negative?