Harnessing the Beltain Energy

Making cyanotypes in the spring sunshine

Did you have a lovely Beltain weekend? I listened to our local cuckoos calling, learnt the words to the maypole song from The Wickerman, made bread, did some illustration work, and of course! Went to the Beltain festival at Butser Ancient Farm, the highlight of my year - although we didn’t actually see the wickerman burn as our youngest is not yet able to stay awake until 9pm. It was still lovely, though.

In olde worlde Britain, Beltain was one of the seasonal fire festivals held to celebrate the ever-turning wheel of the year - in this case, the transition from spring to summer. The festival culminates with the burning of a 30ft wickerman, this year designed to look like an ominous gladiator. I spent time with friends and family in the sun, sipped local pear cider and watched a pair of newly arrived swifts soaring through the sky.

The kids and I also harnessed the Beltain sunshine by making cyanotype prints in the garden using flowers and leaves. Cyanotypes are one of my favourite crafting activities with the kids because it is fairly tidy, and even tiny hands have the dexterity to move leaves and flowers around on a piece of paper, so it really does feel like their own original creation.

I made these two postcard-sized prints to turn into birthday cards this month. On the left, I found a single violet growing next to our compost heap, and on the right I arranged the same violet with a bluebell stem (homegrown) and a forget-me-not. I like the fact that the violet leaf looks like a heart.

If you’d like to have a go at making cyanotypes, I shared a step-by-step guide in my book Ebb and Flow: A Guide to Seasonal Living, which came out last year with Bloomsbury. It’s a lovely craft for celebrating the lengthening days, and absolutely anyone can do it even if you don’t consider yourself ‘creative’, because the focus is on shapes and composition rather than designing something from scratch. Enjoy! x