For me, once I have my emulsion ready I take my screen into my bathroom, placing a towel at the bottom of the door so is blocks out the sun light, and spread the emulsion on my screen using a little plastic piece that came with my kit. You can use a credit card, or a fancy emulsion spreader, whatever you want. I usually go the cheapest route and it seems to work just fine! You want to get a good amount of emulsion on your spreader, place it at the edge of your screen at the frame, let it run down to met the screen and then holding the spreader at an angle pull it up along the screen. You want to do this so that the entire screen is covered, then you want to scrape off any excess emulsion. You want a smooth surface; you want it to be evenly covered no lines of emulsion gooped up anywhere. You don’t want to see darker spots and thick globes of emulsion.
Ok, so now you let your screen dry, in the dark, not lights. Lay it flat on the floor if you have the room, this helps the emulsion dry evenly. The normal lights won’t expose it, but turn them off anyway. The screen should be dry within an hour or two, it will “look” dry and be dry to the touch. After the screen is dry you are now going to expose it.
Now, how does this emulsion work? You take and image, hand drawn, computer printout, whatever you want, but the image has to be completely black and white. Let’s take this image of a star, the image could be cut out of paper or it could be a computer printout (laser printed not Ink jet), as long as the image you are using is dark and thick enough to block out the UV light. The screen will be exposed to a UV light, and wherever the black image is, will not allow light to penetrate the emulsion. The rest of the emulsion will harden and where the black image was will wash out, creating a stencil. The emulsion turns a darker shade of green when it is exposed to light, that's when you know it worked.
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