FALL WORKSHOPS

November and December 2015
Location: Studios at Porter Mill, 95 Rantoul St., Studio 4-1 (4th Floor)
Advanced registration required.
To register, email memoryimprints@gmail.com or call 978-712-0160

Family Tree Thanksgiving Centerpiece
Sunday, November 8, 2 to 5 pm.
$65.00, including supplies. $55 for early registration (by November 1)
Seats available: 6
Families gather at Thanksgiving, and a unique family tree centerpiece is a way to celebrate those around the table. Creating a family centerpiece using family photos is a fun way to do spark conversations around family stories and to acknowledge and include those who are absent. We will use collage techniques with copies of original photos.

Holiday Decorations with Family Photos
Sunday, November 15, 2 to 5 pm.
$65.00, including supplies. $55 for early registration (by November 1)
Seats available: 6
Use family photos to make unique ornaments, menorahs, and other decorations. This is a fun way to use family memories in holiday celebrations. Family photos are great ice-breakers and often get people sharing family stories. This can also be a way to include family members who can’t travel to be with us at the holidays as well as those who have passed on. We will use collage techniques with copies of original photos.

Holiday Gifts with Family Photos
Sunday, December 6, 2 to 5 pm.
$65.00, including supplies. $55.00 for early registration (by November 1)
Seats available: 6
We will make one-of-a-kind holiday gifts with family photos. This is a fun way to share a treasured family memory. (It can also be a way to honor a family member who has passed away.) Create a keepsake object using collage and decoupage techniques. You can make a keepsake box, a decorate plate, or a planter. We will use collage techniques with photocopies of family photos.

To register or for questions, please fill out the form below:

To celebrate Personal History Month, we are hosting at Open House at our studio at Porter Mill Studios, 95 Rantoul Street, Studio 4-1 (4th floor), in Beverly, Massachusetts. Come join us for free gifts and refreshments, demos of our DIY family heirloom projects, and ideas for sharing personal and family history.

For more information, please call us at 978-712-0160 or email us at memoryimprints@gmail.com

Please download our flier: MemoryImprintsMayOpenHouse 

This is a keepsake box that I made recently. This hand painted box is decorated with a photographic image and a ribbon border.  The image is a picture of my mother reading a letter. When I first came across this photo, it was a small black-and-white snapshot, out of focus, and scratched up.

But I loved this image of my mother in the 1940’s, probably reading a letter from my dad, who was overseas. So I used some digital tools to rescue the snapshot.

Then I had fun adding color, drawing from imagination and memory.

The best part about doing a project like this is that it makes me feel as though I am spending time with my mother, even though she has been gone for 30 years now.

Randa Dubnick

Images by Randa Dubnick

All Rights Reserved

Grandma Fannie’s Afghans (Guest Post by Mindy Fitterman).

via Little Oak Genealogy blog

 

Here is a project that I made last year around Mother’s Day. (You can sign up here for our workshops to learn how to make your own.) The image began with a snapshot of my mother that I found in her photo album. She is standing in front of the lilac bush and the house where I grew up. This is one of my favorite pictures of her. The original photo was a black and white snapshot, only 2 inches by 3 inches.(See below). A few years ago, I used Painter to enlarge it and to create a digitally modified and colorized version, also posted here. To make this project, I made a print of the image and then decoupaged it onto a jute-covered masonite board. I covered it with gel medium and pressed it down to get the texture of the fabric to show through. Then painted the fabric with a muted lilac color. I wanted something with the faded look of a memory. It’s nice to have this keepsake to remember my mother, who loved lilacs in the spring.

Here is the original snapshot:

And here is the colorized version that I created:

 

 

Last year, around Veteran’s Day, I came across a small snapshot (2 x 3 inches) in my mom’s photo album. She met my dad in 1943 in Pueblo, Colorado at a USO dance, and they got married a few months later, in April, shortly before he went overseas. While he was away, she kept a photo album with pictures of what was happening in Pueblo as well as the photos that he sent her, a number of them such as this one. I used Painter to colorize and posterize the image. I don’t know who took the original photo, but of course it was one of his army buddies. I don’t know as much as I would like to about what he did during the war.  Mostly I was told that he played the piano in the band (he did), which is what my folks told me when I asked. And I don’t know much about this photo. But on the back of the photo, in my father’s handwriting, it says “March 4, 44” and “Me in my foxhole. Thinking of you.” Maybe that’s all I need to know.

Still, I would like to learn more.  There are a lot of clues in my dad’s photos and my mother’s old album.  Anyway, here is the original snapshot:

 

I have been working on this project for the past few days, and finally finished last night.  This is a sample of an illustrated family tree that I made for Memory Imprints.  I used it for a workshop that we gave today, but it is also an example of the kind of photo display that we can create for clients.  This is collage and decoupage, mixed media on masonite board.

 

This image began with a negative that I found today when I was looking for a picture of my dad. It was a small negative and I could make out who it was (but not where) and I couldn’t tell the quality of the image. But I was curious, so I scanned it in to the computer, and then used Painter software to create a “positive” image from the negative. Yes, it was a photo of my dad holding me and my Uncle Bob holding my cousin. (I was raised in a big house that held two families: my parents, my aunt and uncle, my cousin, and my grandma.) I was excited because I didn’t recall seeing this photo before. But I could see why it hadn’t appeared in any albums, because the focus was too soft and the image was a little blurry. But I thought the image had potential, so I kept going. I still couldn’t figure out the location (and something seemed strange about the faces) so I decided to try flipping the image horizontally. And sure enough, that was the problem: I had scanned the image wrong way round, and once I got it right, the faces looked better and I recognized the house where I grew up! So then I had some fun adding color and posterizing and finally turned this into a woodcut. I thought this would be a good post for Father’s Day.

Here is what the negative looked like:

And here is what it looked like “flipped”:

And here is the photo “wrong way round”:

And here it is, flipped horizontally. This is the image that I worked from to make the digital woodcut, shown above:

This ribbon necklace features a pendant that I created, using a family photo, fabric, and ribbon.  The pendant is attached to the ribbon necklace with jump rings.  I made this necklace for myself, but it is an example of something that I can make for other people, using one of their favorite photos.  The pendant could be used on a chain necklace, a charm bracelet, or even a pin.

The photo is an image of my parents. It is very small version of an larger image:

This double portrait of my parents was originally a black-and-white group photo. And the photo of my mother was not usable because she was blinking (she hated flash cameras) and her eyes were partially closed.  So to get the image you see here, I cropped the original photo to get an image of just my parents, and then used some digital pastel to modify my mom’s eyes and eliminate the partial blink. Then I added the soft color and texture.

This is an example of how a photograph can be rescued and how it can be made into a keepsake.

Images by Randa Dubnick; all rights reserved.

 

 

Here is the keepsake box I have been working on.  The image is a digitally modified photo of my father as a young man.  To create this individual portrait, I cropped an image of my father out of a black-and-white group photo.  Then I modified the picture to create a new background, and added the texture and color.  I painted the wooden box and added the photographic image, allowing some of the wood grain to show through.

By Randa Dubnick   All rights reserved