Emulsion lifts

As a compulsive eBayer of old junk like skeleton keys, slides, cameras, foreign newspapers etc., I’ve been trying to assimilate my pile of ‘crap’ into a pile of ‘crafty crap.’

Using slides that I bought from an estate sale of an elderly couple’s world travels, I created Polaroid 669 (peel apart type) prints using a slide printer (that I also happened to eBay, hmmm…), where you can manipulate the brightness and color levels.

To create emulsion lifts (such as those below), you allow the prints to dry 24 hours before soaking them in [nearly] boiling water in a fancy contraption known as the casserole dish (praise Jesus and the Midwest for these). Once the emulsion–the thin membrane laying on top of the backing paper–begins to bubble, you transfer the whole print with tweezers in to another tray filled with cold water.

Now you can begin to manipulate the emulsion off the backing paper by gently pushing it with a finger or eraser, where it floats around in the cold water like a little photographic jellyfish. Sliding a piece of heavy, cold-pressed watercolor paper underneat the emulsion, you can tear, crease, or stretch the thin emulsion around on the paper.

Aaaand allow to dry! Polaroid Emulsion Lifts -- Found Slides

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Filed under Emulsion Lifts, Polaroid

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