A Tribute To Stanley Unwin

This is my tribute to Stanley Unwin who would have been 101 years old today. What? You´ve never heard of him? The man who could explain absolutely anything in such clear and precise language that even a child could understand?

Here´s a short video of one of his educational lectures.

 

Now you can´t say that wasn´t informative.

One of his many fans has described him as “The masterlode of Stanfoolery of the verbally thrips oratory.” He went on to say, “Stanley lived in a little village in Northampton called Long Buckby, which was known for the boot and shoe bespokey all lock stitchy in the leathery uppers, deep joy of the footwear.” ...and that just about sums him up.

“Deep joy” was one of his favourite expressions which is why I chose it for my tribute page. Also, it perfectly describes how I feel whenever I listen to his Stanfoolery.

In fact you could say he liked this phrase so much that he took it with him when he died.

 

But let Sir Stanley himself have the last word. He usually did anyway because anyone talking to him would have been incapable of speech after listening to him.

When All Else Fails....Colourize!

Whenever possible I prefer to scan old damaged photos myself, especially very small ones which can be difficult to restore unless scanned at a high resolution. However, not all the photos in my scrapbook belong to me and I often have to rely on other family members to scan them for me. In this case the original was scanned at 300 dpi which is the absolute minimum for a single photo and may even have been all right if it hadn´t been just one of half a dozen scanned together on one page of an old album which meant that all detail was lost. At first glance I was struck by the composition and decided that by adding contrast and then sharpening it I might manage to revive it. As you can see, that was a definite improvement...but still not enough. I felt that what it really needed was an immediate focal point. The beach ball, which was just a blur in the original version, looked like a good choice and I think that colourizing it worked pretty well but there was still something missing. I think it was at this point that I realised I was never going to be able to make a presentable photo from it – there simply wasn´t enough detail - but that it might make a really good impressionistic painting so I applied the Paint Daubs filter. Having done that it seemed to me that the parasol merged too much into the sky so I added a color overlay. It took a while to get the right shade of blue but I´m quite happy with the result. A little more contrast was all it took to make it perfect or at least as perfect as I could make it. All I had to do after that was to remove the stained border and create a new one using an off-white shade sampled from the photo itself. (Among my simple tutorials you´ll find instructions on how to do this.)

 Click on image to enlarge

I think you´ll agree that the final result is a lot more interesting than the original. As you can see, I made a note of all the steps I took to transform it from a pale blurry image to quite a presentable little work of art. If, like me, you´re also a beginner in the art of photo restoration I hope this will help and encourage you!

Nostalgic Scrapbook Freebies

Sorry about the delay in posting these freebies but the recent ice age has finally past and I´ve spent most of my time in the garden recently.
Here they are at last.

If you´d like to have these frames, you´ll find them here.
As for me, I´m off to the garden again...

Nostalgic Scrapbook Is In The Store

My latest kit, Nostalgic Scrapbook, is now in the store. Here´s the preview.

 Click on image for a larger view

Because this is such a huge kit I´ve had to show practically all the elements at a fraction of their actual size in order to fit everything into a single preview. A list of its contents may give you a better impression of how large it really is.

You can find more information either in the store or among my kit previews where I´ll soon be offering a set of 3 freebie sketched frames.

Thanks for looking.

In At The Deep End

While looking through my old photos recently I was reminded of a page which I´d almost forgotten. It dates back to shortly after I joined Deco-Pages almost 6 years ago when I had no experience of designing anything other than stained glass windows and murals and it´s only significant because it features the very first photo I ever attempted to restore. Talk about jumping in at the deep end! If I´d had the slightest idea what was involved in photo restoration I´d have chosen something a lot easier to begin with. Well, they say that ignorance is bliss and, if so, I must have been the happiest would-be photo restorer ever. In those days I didn´t have Photoshop to help me so I had to improvise and struggle along with the very few tools provided by my old German language version of Corel Photo-Paint 9. Looking at the results now with a critical eye I realise I really didn´t do a great job but at the time I was so proud of it that I designed a layout around it. Come to think of it, that was a first too. Anyway, for what it´s worth, here it is.

 

That´s still one of my favourite vintage photos and one I´ve attempted several times to restore to my own satisfaction. Well, that hasn´t actually happened yet but, so far, the following is the best I´ve managed. The original is on the far left, then a couple of early attempts at restoration and my latest attempt is in the foreground. Lying next to it is the back of the original on which is written along with the date on which the photo was taken, “With love from your little daughter, Lucas”, something which, for obvious reasons, baffles me to this day.

 

I created this slightly surreal page using a very few of the 85 items in my most recent kit which was named appropriately “Nostalgic Scrapbook” by Lajuana as my imagination apparently took a break after I´d finished the kit. I´ll show a preview soon and may even get it into the store within the next few weeks.

As for that photo, I´m still not entirely happy with it. I can almost feel the ghostly presence of little Lucas looking over my shoulder saying, “Surely you can do better than THAT.” Who knows? Given another 6 years, maybe I can...

From The Sublime...

In most of the photos I have of my aunt she´s unsmiling, composed and elegantly dressed in the height of 30´s fashion. However, just occasionally the façade slips and shows her to be more than just a perfectly groomed fashion plate.

  Click on image to enlarge

The first photo is typical of many I have in which she´s looking her most elegant which is why I chose that particular one for my present blog header. As you can see from the second photo, at some time during the 30s she seems to have become a victim of a truly bizarre fashion and in the third one she´s lost her cool entirely as she scrambles around the beach on all fours with my mother and a friend on her back. Good to know that the family sense of the ridiculous didn´t pass her by. Now you know who you got it from, Neville.

I created this page from the kit I´m currently working on. That is when I´m not in my garden waging war on the snails that infest my veggie patch. I probably cut a ridiculous figure myself as I scatter crumbled egg shells around while muttering strange oaths under my breath. Thank goodness there´s nobody around to take photos of me while I do it!

Creating A "Real" Scrapbook

It´s been typical April weather here recently, a horrible combination of torrential showers which flatten the daffodils in my garden, and sudden gusty winds which turn even the sturdiest umbrella inside out. After a thoroughly unpleasant walk with Dora I needed something to do indoors to take my mind off it. There´s nothing better than difficult and tedious work to make me forget everything but the task in hand and there´s nothing more difficult and tedious than restoring photos so I dug out an old album which is my own personal chamber of photographic horrors. All the photos in it are in a sad state and the one I decided to tackle was so badly scratched, blotched and faded it took me the best part of the morning to restore it and several cups of strong coffee to restore me. Having finished I felt a sense of anticlimax. A glance out of the window showed that the weather hadn´t improved in the meantime so I cast about for something else to do. Then I remembered a battered old scrapbook which pre-dated digital scrapbooking by many years and which had stood neglected on a shelf for so long I´d almost forgotten about it. When I opened it it took me back to the days when I used to draw frames and little motifs to decorate my photos. I never actually stuck on buttons and other “real” embellishments so I suppose it wasn´t a scrapbook in the usual sense of the word. Anyway, it gave me the idea to create something which you might call a hybrid, a cross between a traditional scrapbook and a more modern one which would be particularly suitable for displaying my recent restoration work. The following layout may give you an idea of what I mean.

  Click on image for a larger view

The photo second down on the right is the one I´ve just finished restoring. All the others were edited some years ago and in each case I´ve shown both the original and the restored version though this very small format camouflages the worst of the wear and tear on the originals. I thoroughly enjoyed creating this page though it´s not all my own work. As you can see, I had a helping hand, not to mention an eraser to correct my mistakes as I went along. I think that by now you´ll have gathered that a cup or three of strong coffee is essential to the creative process and is usually accompanied by some drips and splashes so I´ve replicated these too. Now, quite literally, back to the drawing board...

Creating this kit is going to be so much fun!

Vintage Whimsy Is Now In The Store.

Here´s the preview of my latest kit, Vintage Whimsy. As with all my heritage kits it´s a mixture of old and new, vintage and modern and, as always, with a sprinkling of bling and precious stones.

Click on image for a larger view. Click back to return here.

I´ve just released Vintage Whimsy and it´s now available in my store. You´ll find more info about it and other kits plus a new kit freebie HERE.

And talking of bling, I´ve also released a favourite of mine, Floral Bling. Any of these flowers would add an eye-catching accent to any heritage or floral page.

Thank you for looking.

Distracting The Baby

The thing that struck me when I first saw this photo – apart from its battered condition - was the expression on that poor baby´s face, and after all those years I can´t quite define it even now that I´ve removed the blemishes which partly hid it from me. It´s not exactly fearful and it´s not exactly pouting but it looks to me like the lull before the storm and I can well imagine that she probably burst into tears the very moment after the shutter clicked. She´s obviously not looking at the photographer so I can only imagine that the look is directed at her mother. Maybe it´s an appeal for help which says, “I´m being a good girl and sitting as still as I can but I can´t keep this up much longer.” So I thought I´d try to distract her from the ordeal by giving her something fun to look at, but showing her the girl on the swing doesn´t seem to have done the trick. Maybe she´ll cheer up when the girl with the dog runs past her. Hmm. But then again, maybe not, and the pensive child clutching those original defaced images seems to be entirely in sympathy with her.

I created this whimsical page using mainly the teal, blue and turquoise elements in my new kit which is a heritage kit with a difference in that it´s possible to use it for either elegant or playful layouts, hence the name Vintage Whimsy. I´ll be releasing it soon and I hope you´ll like it when you see the previews.

Tante Anna

Anna was the oldest of the four Schwerdhöfer sisters of whom the second youngest was my husband´s mother. I never knew Anna and know very little about her apart from the fact that she was born in Marktheidenfeld in Bavaria and died in Mainz in Rheinland-Pfalz at the age of 89. As for the age of this photo, it´s difficult to be exact about the date, but judging by the hairstyle and the dress which doesn´t have a dropped waistline, I originally guessed it was probably taken during the early 1920s. My husband thinks that Anna died about 25 years ago which would mean that she was born around the end of the 19th century so my guess is probably pretty accurate. I´d even go so far as to assume that this lovely studio portrait may have been taken to commemorate her 21^st birthday. It´s obviously a special occasion anyway as she´s decked out in all her finery and wearing some beautiful jewellery and she´s certainly looking a lot less solemn than the subjects in most of the studio photos I have from that era. I think this is a perfectly beautiful photo and it´s still in such remarkably good condition that no restoration was necessary, thank goodness!

The kit I´m working on at present is mainly in warm sepia and cool teal with cream, gold and silver accents. I´ve used mainly the warmer shades for this page with a little pale gold and silver to echo the colour of her dress and the artificial roses she´s holding.