Polaroid Transfer Gallery

Now available: handcrafted notecard sets and custom greeting cards bearing Karren's Polaroid transfer prints, and verses by Katherine L. Franklin.The cards are suitable for framing and can be used for wedding announcements, birth announcements, or just to write a note. Contact Karren for details.

Karren creates her Polaroid transfer prints using a Vivitar Slide Printer, which she uses to project one of her original slide images onto a Polaroid professional film. The film is peeled apart before the picture develops, and the negative is placed face down on screenprinting paper for a short time. When the negative is lifted, it leaves the image on the paper. The image is then sometimes enhanced with pastels, art pencils or the like. The result is that no two of these transfer images are alike, despite the fact that they may have come from the same slide.

In a related process called Polaroid emulsion transfer, Karren creates the American Flag and Holiday themes. The process involves making a polaroid picture from a slide using the Vivitar Slide Printer. The picture is then soaked in hot water. The emulsion, the thin, fragile top layer of the picture containing the image itself, is carefully removed from the backing and transferred to a card or piece of art paper. The beautiful folds and fluctuations in the emulsion as it is transferred contributes to its uniqueness and exquisiteness. Again, no two images are exactly the same.

American Flag Theme		Holiday Theme
Old Glory	Flag	Holiday Candle	White Poinsettia
Nautical Theme
Weathered Boat	Lighthouse	Pelican Sentry	Pelican Overseer
Variety Theme
Nautical Rope	Autumn Church	Old and Tired	Conflagration
Equestrian Theme
Cimmaron	Scotland Yard	Bookends	Grazing
Mountain Theme
Fly Fishing 1	Fly Fishing 2	Mountain Pass	Mountain River
Flower Theme
Mexican Bluebell	Oleander	She Love Me	Sunflower
Balloon Theme
Red Glow	Triple Balloons	Up and Away 1	Up and Away 2