Back to scanning vintage magazines and stuff or…?

It’s been almost a year since I last updated my vintage fashion shop. I still have a few hundred dresses to sell. I got derailed on my vintage clothing sales project by a new job with a longer commute, and a lack of bandwidth and time as a result.

I sparkled and fizzled at that job, for several reasons. Nowadays, I’m comfortably working from home and settled into a new fully remote job that has no physical office (so the possibilities of calling me to work in an office are zero)… Now that I have time and bandwidth again for hobbies, I’m turning back to this old site of mine.

This week I’ve been inspired to scan old magazines and post them after finding a hoard that I’d bought years ago and thought were lost in my several moves! Since I have that space with all my vintage in it, and room, I made a DIY magazine scanning set up with just a few additional items off Amazon (I already had the black felt and card table):

• Overhead camera mount with ring light – This worked perfectly, especially using ambient light. My phone is not in this picture because I was taking this picture with it 🙂
• 12″ Foam Incline Stretch Wedge – Set of 2 , Black – to act as a “book cradle”, since old books and magazines fall apart so easily. These are not pictured, but they definitely helped me with my first “test” scan of the Chicago World’s Fair – the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

Finally, to edit the scans, I attempted to buy Booksorber but I didn’t receive a license key so it didn’t work. I’m almost glad that that desktop scanning app didn’t work, because I quickly discovered Genius Scan, which is amazing! It retains the high quality, allows quick batch editing, the AI is really good for straightening out scans and undoing distortions, and it synchs to Google Drive, Evernote and other apps.

Check out my before and after scan using the DIY setup above (with the wedges) and edited on my iPhone using the Genius Scan app:

I hope to get back to posting new vintage clothing for sale, but scanning old books and magazines is more peaceful and can be done in shorter bursts. One of the reasons I vacillate between burnout with listing vintage clothing is the sheer labor intensity of the whole ordeal. In contrast: Scanning, reading, and writing about old publications doesn’t take me away from my birds or otherwise disturb my life as much.