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Posts Tagged ‘Val Erde’

A Huge Thank You to Val Erde at Colouring the Past!

Posted in Chicago history, family heirloom, Family History, Genealogy, Illinois history, Klein, tagged , , , , , , , on June 12, 2019| 53 Comments »

Last week I told you about the great special to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of Val Erde’s blog, Colouring the Past.

I was so blessed to get one of her free colorizations!

She chose my paternal grandmother, Marie Klein, as a very young woman. This is the photo:

And this is the gorgeous colorization that Val created:

Now I feel like I could touch my grandmother’s hair and her blouse! Val did an amazing job, as she always does. I think her skin tones are very accurate, and that has got to be one of the most difficult things to get right.

This photo shows me that my grandmother’s love of pearls started young. She always wore pearls and collected a bit more pearl jewelry over the years. She gave my aunt a string of pearls for her wedding, and eventually my aunt gave them to me (she only had sons). You can check that out at this post, if you like: Vintage Jewelry.

Val will be able to answer any questions about the colorization process, if you leave a comment here for her. And I will respond as usual, although I don’t know anything about colorizing!

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Margarethe in Living Color

Posted in Chicago history, Family History, Genealogy, Illinois history, Klein, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 15, 2019| 31 Comments »

I was finally able to ask Val Erde at Colouring the Past to colorize another photo from my collection.

I had a portrait of my paternal grandmother’s mother, Margarethe Wendel Klein, but it was in pretty bad shape.

I put it together like this for Val:

Using this photograph and researching from a “snapshot” I posted before.

Val was able to do a wonderful job with this damaged photo–both in sepia and in color.

RIP MARGARETHE WENDEL KLEIN

BIRTH 25 JUNE 1869 • Budesheim, Mainz-Bingen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

DEATH 24 MAY 1932 • Elmhurst, Du Page, Illinois, United States

 

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Cora and Alice in Living Color

Posted in Adriaan Zuijdweg/Adrian Zuidweg Sr., Alice Paak DeKorn, Cora DeKorn Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Michigan history, Netherlands history, Paak, Peek, Photography late 19th century, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 5, 2018| 27 Comments »

Last week I showed you the beautiful work Val Erde at Colouring the Past did on my great-grandfather Adrian Zuidweg (Adriaan Zuijdweg) photograph, so I wanted Val to perform her magic on a woman or two in my photo collection.

Here is a photograph of Adrian’s wife, Cora DeKorn Zuidweg, my great-grandmother. I don’t believe I have shared this one yet as it was in the beautiful old album I only recently scanned. This is the youngest I have seen Cora where I knew for sure that it was, indeed, Cora.

Cora hasn’t quite lost the “baby fat” in her face here.

She is beautiful, though the photo has damage, especially foxing stains, on it.

But look at Cora after Val gives her some color!

I also asked Val to color a photo of Cora’s mother, Alice Paak DeKorn. The one I gave her was quite faded, so the resulting work is not as vibrant as the others, but it still allows Alice to come off the page into my heart.

Here was the original:

That does it for now with the “in living color” photos. I ordered these two and Adrian’s for this blog, and I share two others on my blog Entering the Pale. I hope to order more sometime in the future. Don’t hesitate to check out Val’s blog for more examples of her beautiful work.

 

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