IMP Blog Team Melinda Staley | Disneyland 1980 Teacups

Hello everyone! How do you like your tea? Fast or slow?
Me, well I’m on the slow team now, though back when these pictures were taken I did love a good, fast spin on the merry-go-rounds of the day.

We are having a blast scrapping and reliving our memories of our trips to the theme parks over at In My Pocket in the Theme Parks 3 Class. For this round of the class I’ve chosen to start work on an album of my photos and memories of my very first, and only so far, trip to Disneyland in 1980. I am blessed to have quite a few photos from the trip as my parents loved to document things with a camera. I’ve actually got a mix of slide photos (from my parents’ camera) and my own little prints from my very first camera. I think it was some sort of Kodak 110 camera, but I don’t remember exactly now and I don’t seem to have it in my collection of past cameras. I have also been doing some research and trying to sort out the memories I have with what was actual reality at the time, so I’m working with some internet finds of photos and ephemera I’ve found from the general time period as well. All of these make for an interesting mix in sizes and colors that can be a challenge to make work well together.

My parents have hundreds of slides, some in carousels and some in boxes, as for many years that is the type of film they shot in their Fuji and Canon SLR cameras. Most of my early childhood photos are on those slides. Viewing them now is a challenge. For Christmas this last year I decided I wanted a slide scanner so that I could get those slides into a digital format that I could more easily view, share and do some scrapbooking with. I have an HP flat-bed scanner that scans transparent film formats, and it does a beautiful job. But, let’s face it – it is a pain in the rear to get the slides and negatives into the film holders and it is so SLLOOOOWWW and noisy.

I could see scanning the really important slides and negatives with the HP scanner, but most don’t need that sort of intensive treatment. After spending a few days reading specs and reviews, I decided on the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner and I’ve been very pleased. It isn’t a true ‘scanner’, but it is very easy to hand feed the slides and negatives in, make some quick adjustments to brightness and colors if needed, and snap a digital version of the photo with the push of the button. I was able to digitize the carousel of photos in the image above as well as 5 boxes of slides in a couple of hours. I felt very accomplished and my ears didn’t hurt from hours of listening to the scanner screech.

Once I had my photos all digitized and ready to work with I needed to make some adjustments and touchups so they would work better together. For the slide photos, I had to lighten the shadows a bit once I had them in PSE, but otherwise I didn’t really do any other major adjustments to these two photos. Something to remember when you are working with scanning old photos is to not lighten them too much during the scanning process unless you don’t plan to do any further adjustments. Blown out exposure areas cannot be recovered, but darker areas can always be lightened more later. Doing the majority of the exposure adjustments later in PSE gave me lots more control over the process allowing me to lighten shadowed areas without blowing out brighter areas like the sky.

Now, let’s look at the one photo of this ride that was taken with my little 110 camera that is a print photo and what I did to it. This one I scanned on the HP scanner as it is not nearly as time intensive as scanning transparent film types. It needed a lot of cleaning up, but I didn’t worry about making it absolutely perfect either as some of those imperfections go with the memories. I did the following things:
*White edge removed around the photo with magic wand selection and a layer mask applied. I made sure to keep the little spot at the top that is worn away from handling over the years
*Color correction done with Adjust Color> Remove Color Cast as it was very much on the orange/pink side of fading and not even close in tone to the slide photos
*Small dust spots removed with Noise>Dust filter
*Scratches and larger dust spots removed with clone stamp and spot healing brush tools

Once I had the photos fixed up I got to start putting things on the page. Since I had both rectangle and square photos I picked a template from the 365 Unscripted Stitched Grids 4 with a mix of both shapes. I placed the print photo in the middle of the page and decided that I liked its ‘not quite straight’ angle the way it was. The teacups ride is colorful, so I went with some of the more colorful choices in the IMP Theme Park Collab that came with the IMP Theme Park Class.

I liked the 3×4 ‘funky color blocks’ card by Neftali in the IMP Theme Park Collab, but wanted to use that pattern in a 4×6 slot on the page. The pattern is also in the patterned paper section of the kit, so I resized the paper down and grouped it to the template pocket card. After trying a few different options on the page I ended up repeating that in the opposite corner at the top of the page too. Shifting the paper gives a different but coordinating pattern visual. I used a few elements and word strips from Project Mouse Fantasy Bundle to dress up the IMP cards. Some written words, one from the IMP kit and another from PM Fantasy give those two striped cards more coordinating vibes. I was on the fence for most of my page creation about whether to include the stitching or not. I decided the white stitches (the templates come with both black and white options) gave some edge definition to the page without being overwhelming to it. I don’t really have any journaling to go with this moment, so I called it done. I love that the kit colors coordinate with my Project Mouse goodies I love so much too – I do so love to have lots of options when I’m scrapping, and the IMP Theme Park Collab has just expanded my choices a lot!