Liquid Emulsion

Liquid emulsion is similar to the emulsion found on photo paper, but in liquid form so it can be coated on a range of surfaces. We prepared a range of surfaces including wood, fabric and different types of paper and card by painting them with a few layers of PVA glue. When they were dry we moved them to the dark room and coated them with liquid emulsion. We projected the films onto them in the same way as normal photographic paper, and used a test strip to see how long they should be exposed for. I found that they needed longer than photo paper to produce an image, and exposed most of them for around 12 seconds.

I experimented with exposing photos onto a few different materials. I tried one on newspaper which didn't work at all. The image only appeared in streaks where the liquid emulsion had been painted on, and when I put it in the water it was washed off the newspaper. I think it may have needed more coats of PVA glue, and the liquid emulsion painted on more carefully or in more layers. I also printed photos onto two types of fabric: a white cotton with grey embroidered leaves, and a textured fabric with painted wave shapes. The images came out quite well on both the fabrics but not on the patterned parts. I think this could work quite well depending on the photo being printed. It would probably need to be more of a pattern based image so that the two would overlap and combine well together.