Cyanotype with German leaves

When I was in Germany recently, I spent one lovely evening collecting leaves from the park near the office. And here are my very first attempts at cyanotype printing using those leaves

These were made using preprepared paper from Temu. I didn't think it would work as the paper was already a blue shade, suggesting that it had been exposed to UV light. But, in fact, it still worked well. I was using a UV lamp, and these were exposed for 45 minutes. However, a test piece indicated that 20 minutes was enough to reach full exposure, with diminishing returns after that. 5 minutes had no effect, and ten minutes resulted in a much lighter background. This was with a sheet of clear acrylic over the leaves to flattien them in place.

I now have the chemicals to prepare my own paper, so that will be a good next step. When I do this, I'll need to do a further text sheet to see how much exposure to the light is required.