An Antique Photograph Color Corrected and Colorized in Photoshop

Currently, I'm taking an Adobe Photoshop and an Adobe Illustrator class. Sometimes I think I am one who just never grew up. I am still taking college courses at 51. But there's just so much I "need to know" about how things work.

I posted an old photograph of my husbands great-grandmother, Georgietta and her sister, Nina last October. This is a "warm and fuzzy" story about how my mother-in-law gave my husband a diamond ring that belonged to his great-grandmother and he gave it to me as my engagement ring.

Now I feel quite connected to Georgietta as I am reminded of her when I look at my ring everyday. I decided to use the picture of Georgietta, that my mother-in-law loaned to me, in one of my projects for my Photoshop class.

This is an exercise in color correction. I don't know if you can tell because the quality of images on the web is poor but I did correct the overall tonality on this image before I "colorized" it. Colorization is an age old procedure that was done to black and white photographs because of course, at one time, there was no color photography. The images were painstakingly colored by hand. Photoshop changes all this, but not very much. The process of colorization can still be painstaking. The first image is a photograph that I took of the original black and white image which had been sepia toned over 100 years ago. The second image is my version, cropped and color corrected to make it visibly more acceptable, and then colorized by painting color over specific portions of the original image, one at a time.

If you want to talk Photoshop, color correction, or colorization, find the button in the right sidebar that says: "Le Clic Pour Emai Moi" and talk baby, talk! I'm here for ya.







Until we meet again, my very fondest,

Reconstructed Vintage and Antique Jewelry...My New Etsy Store

Everything I do in life seems to be about as easy as a cow having a breech birth.  No kidding.  I don't want to complain (only because I'm sure nobody wants to hear it) but blogging is not easy for me.  Hence, my long term absence.  I am too much of a perfectionist and I don't have the skills to make my website how I think it should be.  Evidently I'm not alone. Few sites I see are really slick and flawless.  Enough of my negativity but I do hope to someday make blogging easier.

I opened a new Etsy store today called French at hArt.  The one I opened in November, 2009, Embellissez la Reine, was supposed to be for my handmade items but as it turned out, I went off on a tangent when I realized that vintage jewelry making supplies sell way more than my own "art to wear."

What I know now is that one of the few times when life is not difficult for me is when I am designing and creating.  I vow now that I will stock my new store, French at hArt, weather or not anyone patronizes it.  I have to be creative, especially now that I am "middle aged."  I no longer have time to waste doing what I should do or what I "have" to do in lieu of what I want to do. Anyway, being an artist is no longer what I want to do.  Over the years I've learned that it is what I "have" to do.  I hope someone out there, maybe you, enjoys these pictures of the first one of a kind piece I made for my new store.  I call it Girlish Romance.  It marks the beginning of a long term and lovely journey...

Is anyone familiar with Miriam Haskell?  She has long since passed away but her company, Miriam Haskell Jewelry is still in tact.  They used to sell jewelry that featured a lot of beaded filigree.  The pendant on this piece was beaded, by moi, in the same style.

3 Different Banner Graphics Created in Photoshop For Etsy and Artfire Shops

I've been away, way too long. I had some surgery and illnesses to deal with and other than that, I just let too many things get in the way of my blogging. There is so much I want to do with my blog, but I'm on a learning curve with designing web pages. One of the first things I want to work on is to get my blog to load faster. Being that it's heavy on images, like most blogs, it loads very slowly and that drives me nuts!  If you have problems with seeing the images, please take time to reload the page. Nevertheless, I thought you might like to see some images I've been designing and redesigning for my stores.  They look very blurry here but you can click on the images if you want to see them at my store sites where they show much better.  They look best in Photoshop, where I created them and if you have any Photoshop questions I can help with, don't be afraid to emal moi by clicking on the appropriate button on the right.

I went from this:

To this:

My store, Embellissez la Reine, has a theme of French Royalty, so I decided to change the colors from the colors of the French flag, red, white, and blue, to pinks and mauves, to go with my business theme.

I'll tell you about the exquisite ladies in my banner from left to right: First, we have every francophile's dream girl, the last queen of France, Marie Antointte. She was the wife of King Louis the XVI. Next, I put the Empress Eugenie. She was married to Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. Next, I put the infamous, Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. The last little lady is Queen Maria Theresa. She was the sovereign of Austria and mother of Marie Antoinette.

This next banner is for my new Etsy store, to begin in 2011:

It features an image of a Joan of Arc medal.  I have created this store, French at hArt, exclusively to display and sell my own designs of reconstructed French and Victorian, antique jewelry. I sell antique jewelry and vintage jewelry making and design supplies in the store I opened last year, Embellissez la Reine. This store has turned out to be fairly popular and I hope to increase my customer base this year as I add new items and advertise in anyway possible. Also, I am hoping that my new store French at hArt, turns out to be popular as well. There is nothing I would love more than making a living as I satisfy my desire to work with and design beautiful, dreamy, adornments.

A few months ago, the art ecommerce site, Artfire, was selling lifetime memberships for $5.95 per month. I took advantage of that deal and plan to make it a duplicate of my Etsy shop, French at hArt.

Here is the banner I designed for my Artfire shop.  It looks great on the actual site so click on the image: 

Arts & Crafts or Nouveau "Cymric" by Liberty & Co., London, 1905

I have an anecdote about a synchronistic transaction that took place at my Etsy Store, Embellessez la Reine:
It starts with a sterling silver and enamel brooch that I bought from a dealer in France. It had distinct hallmarks on the back and appeared to me, to be Art Nouveau in style. I decided to do a little research and put it for sale in my store. I found that it was made by Liberty & Co. of London under the name, "Cymric" in about 1905.   Art Nouveau is a movement that evolved in France between 1890 and 1905. This brooch is more correctly Arts and Crafts, as it was made in England.  Arts and Crafts is a movement that grew there between 1880 and 1910.  Without further ado, I took my pictures and listed it for sale. Here's what happened next:

My 20 year old son and I were on the deck "chillin' " one day when I came in to check my email. I had a nice correspondence from a lady in England who was interested in the brooch. She asked if I could lower my price. I emailed her back right away, saying that it was nice to hear from her and I would entertain any serious offer. No sooner did I hit "send" when I received another email, she had already purchased the brooch. I started another email back to her, telling her that I see she decided it was worth full price. Another email came into my box. She sounded a bit distressed. She received my email saying I would take an offer and now she had already paid full price! I then offered her a percentage refund and she said she'd take it. Everyone was happy and I packed up the brooch and sent it off. Next day, I received another email from her. It just so happened she had woken up with the knowledge that she had an original catalog from 1905 showing the exact, sterling silver and enamel brooch for sale at 7 shillings. See my pictures of the brooch below plus a copy of her catalog page.



My picture (above, left) is upside down but it's there, in the catalog picture, on the bottom row, in the middle.


























This amazing little sterling silver and enamel brooch was made in England, somehow made its way to France where I bought it and brought it to the United States of America. Now it's gone home again to England, perhaps for good :)

When my husband asked me to marry him, about 8 years ago now, it was the good, old-fashioned way, at the fanciest, Italian restaurant in town. I remember him being kind of nervous and shaky when he pulled this beautiful diamond ring out of his pocket. He told me he wasn't sure what it was, his mother had given it to him. Thinking back on it now, of course I thought he was adorable, and still do.

More than 5 years after we were married, I was wearing my ring and bumped my hand into a railing on the elevator where we live. I remember the diamond went flying out of the setting, across the elevator, onto the floor. My mother-in-law and I took the pieces to a very reputable jeweler here in Palo Alto, California. She told me that after many, many years of wear, the prongs that held the ring in place had completely worn away. She reset the stone by replacing the prongs and was able to tell us a little more about the ring:

The setting is 18 kt gold. Apparently, the diamond itself is called an old miner's cut. She said it was cut from the original rock in such a way that the very largest stone could be harvested from the rough diamond. Therefore, one of the sides of the diamond is from the outer most portion of the original, found stone. The finished, cut diamond is 1.1 carats.

At some point, my mother-in-law, being one who never throws anything away (bless her heart), appeared with this picture of the original owner of my ring. Her name was Georgietta E. (on the left). In this photograph she was accompanied by her sister, Nina. Georgietta was born in Wyoming in 1872 and married, with my ring on her finger in Massachusetts in 1895. She was my husband Kingsley's maternal, great-grandmother. I'd like to say thank you to Georgietta. It's wonderful to have an antique diamond ring with provenance too. Who would have known?



















Soon, I'll show a picture of Georgietta's mother and some of her beautiful jewelry. Until next time, my very fondest,