faux-polaroids

I found these pictures of my Moma in a desk drawer the other day, I love them. Mostly because they're my Mom, but more than that too - I also love the vintage softness of the film and the way they feel in your hand. There's something about the look of them that just draws me. I wanted to put them out on my desk, though I was hesitant to, for fear of them getting damaged by a careless spill or from too much sun (my office is quite bright). I realized I could just have them reprinted or I could easily frame them. But there's also something nice about the casual feel of the, just propped up on my desk and so I wondered how I could preserve the originals, but still have a display photo that had some of the wonderful vintage feel to it.

Recently, I came across and old box of Polaroid 600 film, excited I plopped it into my camera and went around trying to get an image. Sadly, and not unexpectedly as the film was decades old, it had lost all of it's polaroid chemical magic, so after a few hours of hopeful shutter-clicking and camera-whirring, I was left with a handful of blank frames. Being a polaroid lover, I was unwilling to toss the blanks and so I just hung on to them for months thinking of project ideas for them. I toyed with several reinvented polaroid crafts, but discarded the ideas declaring them unfit and unworthy of the precious blank frames. 

This is the first of two uses that I thought was neat enough to use up the blanks for, I'll share the second another day. Basically all I did was photograph the images. I have more control with my camera to capture the light and quality of an old photo, than I feel like the scanner is capable of, so in order to get a digital version, I often prefer re-photographing to scanning. After getting them in the computer I color-corrected them, just for fun and to make them feel more like polaroids, then reprinted them. After cutting out the slightly bigger than 3" x3" image, I flipped over the polaroid blank and used my craft knife to cut through the black plastic layer. Not through the whole frame - just the back layer. The glossy plastic on the front separated easily from the back and I was able to slide the reprinted image into the blank frame. I'm currently using a miniature slinky, wrapped in a circle, to display them on my desk.