toning Cyanotype (wrongly!!)

just finished three weeks of summer courses in photography:rolleyes:

in this last one, we made mostly cyanotypes, but also liquid emulsion was used.

I taught in doing these images, and a lot of fine images was made.

however, as I am only one person, I can't be several places in one time, and at the fianl day, I noticed some toned cyanotypes, that looked strange...

I can safely say, that it was the greenest cyanotypes I have ever seen, and I curiously asked the author how she obtained that tone......

Happily she answered, that she just toned them over on out new photohouse, and that the result was a surprise to her also.
She thought they'd turn out brown.....

SO, instead of using soda - tannin - tea and so on, she had bleached, and browntoned these images, thinking they were images made of liquid emulsion.........

my question here: was that a good discovery, or a real bad one.....?

I mean, I have no ida what happens chemically, when a cyanotype is treated with conventinal bleach/browntoner (and actually she also dipped them in selenium).

the results looked good.

but ?

Do you have any pictures to show these strange results ?

I am sorry, but no.

the woman was so ashamed over her wrong doing, that she took down the images and left...........

(I think I can remake the tones - I know what she did. as long as it is not too dangerous ...)

As you mentioned before (Tea) I've had some nice results using tea for toning.

I also tried disolving "Mike & Ike" candy... the red ones into water and made a nice red bath, but they did not really work well. But the prints smelled real tasty. The Mike & Ike candy coloring worked with gum printing I found.

My cyanotypes are toned with Tannic acid and Borax. I put them in a solution of tanic acid for less than a minute,10-30 sec will do, then wash and put in Borax solution to tone them a purple brown. The amounts of tannin and borax in the solution are forgiving and try what ever works,experiment. I have seen where the print is to be put in borax or carbonate solution first then tannic acid but found reversing these steps to be much more effective.

Do any of You have tried to tone using food colouring ?