Vintage Photo Jewelry

I've been collecting vintage photographs ever since I was a teenager. I used to spend hours at this junk shop in Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley looking through the boxes of old photos they had there until one caught my attention or moved me in such a way that I couldn't leave the shop without it.

This photograph was one I bought there. It's been with me for over 16 years and has moved in and out of at least eight different apartments (before I had kids, moving was a sort of hobby of mine. I still get the itch sometimes, but our apartment is really great and it would be a shame to leave it....)

Recently I decided to start making jewelry with some of the photographs in my collection. I use a laminated high quality copy of the original photograph like this one of a sexy 60s woman. I bought a set of photographs on ebay, the other one with her in the same pose but with her button closed and the skirt down (the more modest position.) I had them nicely framed and am giving them to my husband for Christmas.

Ebay (at least in Germany) is great for vintage photographs. You can get almost everything for only a Euro, I guess because there aren't many collectors out there. I paid a little more for this set of photographs, but they still definitely weren't expensive.

I'm planning on making a lot more of this jewelry after the holidays. Some of the photographs used will be from my own family, like these of my Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam was the black sheep of my mother's very protestant German-Russian family. You can read more about him here.

Happy holidays everyone, and happy vintage hunting! :)