Green Paper

Vintage Gluebook Pages - with all Vintage Material!

Last week, I posted about using the "real thing" more often in our work....and yesterday (at Karla's) I crafted 5 spreads in my vintage gluebook - all with the actual vintage materials - no copies! 

The flower background above is a endpaper from an old book. You can see a page of music behind that. The snapshot is from an old album I picked up about a year ago. The map pieces are from my favorite old French Atlas - it's water damaged and really beat up and yet I still hesitate to use it, so silly. No one else will ever love it like I do!

More music and map pieces, a bit of ledger paper, a picture from an old Munsy's magazine, part of an old ticket, and a tiny piece of Victorian scrap I have been hanging on to forever.

Another old snapshot, another bit of the French atlas, music and dictionary paper... opposite a page from an old German birthday gift book and a little snippet from an autograph book.

Another picture from a Munsey's magazine, another flower illustration from the German gift book, more dictionary, maps and music. The Saturday Dec 6, 1851 card is from an old game that I don't remember the name of...I sold packages of mixed pieces on eBay a year or two ago and this may be the only one left - time to use it!

One more snapshot and music,a torn bit of an old trade card on the bottom left a and a blank calling card on the top right. The text piece is from an old French magazine, Lectures Pour Tous.

As you can see, I used a lot of old music, dictionary pages and maps - easy to do when there are normally so many pages in any dictionary, music book or atlas. The magazine pieces are from collected issues of old magazines, I wrote about finding these in an old post HERE. 

If you ever shop flea markets or antique shows, when you can talk to the vendors, ask any paper vendors if they have old damaged pieces that aren't on display.  If they do, and they let you pick through them, you can sometimes get a nice selction of torn or beat-up pieces you won't mind art-ing with, at an affordable price. Most vendors will be happy for you to take some damaged stock off their hands.

So, how'd you do this week - make anything with your "real things"?

Back from Vacation...

I'm home from my visit to California, where I had a wonderful time.

We did both family (Nica's first birthday!) and tourist-y things. Nica's birthday party was fabulous - just family and a few friends. Nica was cheerful and smiling through the entire thing (actually, she's normally like that) and she seemed to love all of her gifts, as well as the cake.

But the thing you all probably care about the most is my trip to the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena CA. Hundreds of vendors, miles of aisles.   This is the 3rd time I visited the Rose Bowl Flea and the other 2 time were fabulous. This time, there were some cool things you might have liked...

sweet baby shoes...

burlap...

and more burlap...

and loads and loads of vintage clothes

The last time I went, I bought dozens of cool things. This time, everything seemed overpriced or just boring. There were few books there, and even less ephemera. I had better luck last year when we visited the Pasadena City College Flea. I plan to schedule for the Long Beach Flea next time - I hear that's great!  

So, what did I get? I bought two items. Yep, you read that right, two. But - they're both wonderfully cool, both were affordable and they'll give me hours of gluebooking fun!

One is a 1920s-1930s scrapbook of dozens of cool pictures of people and activities, including swimming, a wedding, graduation, and plenty of family and individual shots.

The other is an 1880s autograph book with loads of pages of sentiment - many decorated with a bit of Victorian scrap.

I'll share something from each with you in this week's Collage Club, so if you're a member, or become one, watch for that.

What else did I do on my trip? I visited the Getty and saw various exhibits, including the Luminous Paper exhibit, which I highly recommend. We went to Universal Studios, where I got a private back lot tour with my sister Kathi, who is head of benefits there. We also went to a free outdoor jazz concert at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and visited some of the exhibits there. One was a small dual Monet/Lichtenstein exhibit of a series of paintings by each artist, both of the Rouen Cathedral.

What did you do while I was gone?

Found Objects

Don't you see that term - found object - and ask yourself, what in the world are found objects? I think they're little vintage bits and pieces of paper ephemera, game pieces, numbers or letters, tags, little toys, etc...they're the things that people use in art which make you say. "where do I find THAT?"

I always think of found objects as obscure, unusual and maybe just plain hard to find.

Anyway, I came across some fun new things, plus a few of my old favorites. I also went through my stash of bits and pieces, then I listed these terrific found items in my Etsy shop. 

These run the gamut from rare things I've only spotted a couple times all the way through to vintage pieces I've collected that look really old and distressed!  

But, if you're like me and you love the odd, unusual, distressed and shabby...well, I have some things you may like. Please stop by my Etsy shop if you'd like to take a look at all of the found objects I found...

 

More books to watch for...

I haven't shared a paper source in a long time, so I thought I would let you know about antique bound periodicals. You may or may not be familiar with them but, depending on the magazine, they can be a great resource for black and white photos, illustrations and sometimes advertisements.

 

They're exactly what they sound like - a collection of same title magazines bound together into a book. I think they were usually bound for libraries and normally don't have their original covers and maybe some of the last pages.  There may be a collection of 3 months or 6 months, or maybe even a January through December collection, depending on the magazine. 

 

In the past, I've found a variety including a Harper's Bazaar and a medical society journal (that one has only a few illustrations but it's fascinating reading). 

This week I lucked into another Munsey's for October 1896-March 1897 and an affordable Ladies Home Journal for Jan-Dec 1889. Ladies Home Journals are filled with illustrations and ads but they tend to be really pricey. Mine is pretty damaged, so was about 1/4 the price I usually see them. Artists seem to be the only people who prefer damaged books and ephemera, which means we can sometimes get a good price.

 

So the next time you're looking at old books, watch for bound magazines - you might find a treasure trove of images and text.

This week...

I priced and packed the latest for the antique store...

 

...and finished reading this book (now I need to get the 2nd one): 

 

...and my son took me out to dinner...

 

...and I did get a few more spreads done in my June Gluebook...

 

What have you been up to?

Did you know I buy books?

Yeah, I thought you did.... Well, I bought some today and thought you'd like to get a look at some of them...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't forget that you can win a fabulous prize because I'm buying your friendship in this post...there's still plenty of time to sign up. 

Scenes from Bottoms Up

I went to the monthly 'Bottoms Up' sale today in KC today and got a few pictures...

  

You can see Beth on the left, all the way back there...

 

some of Beth's terrific goods...love the ticking on the tables:

 

Here's Gwen of French by Design...busy busy

 

  

 

Be sure to go tomorrow if you're in the KC area - definitely worth it!

"Bottoms Up:  High end design, rock bottom prices!"

Join us this weekend for the newest monthly antique and vintage market in the historic Kansas City West Bottoms.  Some of KC’s best dealers will be presenting amazing finds in an 8,000 sq. ft. warehouse setting.
March 5 & 6
9:00am – 5:00pm

Hodge Podge of Topics

I have a cold & I think I'm a little loopy, so this post is a bit of this and a bit of that...

First, I haven't shown any of my recent art projects, so I'm sharing a couple... These are both Artist Class projects. First is my version of the Homage to a Loved One piece from Tammy Sprinkle.  I showed it in-progress quite a while ago & realized I never showed the completed piece: 

 

That's my Grandmother with my Dad as a baby.  That sparkly M was given to me by Beth Leintz - my Grandmother's name was Mary too, so it seemed appropriate. 

I think the piece still needs something(s). Tammy's version is a lot more cohesive, so I put mine up on the mantle to live with for a while.

Here are a couple of rings I made with Nerissa Alford's Bling Ring project.  One's made from a vintage earring, the other from a mother-of-pearl button:  

 

I just love them both. This was a fun way to use a couple pieces I've been hanging onto for a while.

I sorted pages for ephemera books a couple days ago and saved out this picture to share; it's just so charming.

Please send me a picture of anything you make with it.

Next, an antique-ing jaunt this week turned up a beat up antique cabinet card photo album with amazing pages. It was pricey, but have you ever seen this shape of page before? I haven't - I love these old albums.

The cover was trashed but most of the pages are beautiful. I saved the good ones in sets of 2, in case you want to play with them too.  I put them on Etsy. 

And last, (brace yourself for pictures from my phone) before...

and after...

Please pay no attention to the non-vintage supplies on the floor. 

Last week I rented a bit of shelving at a nearby antique mall to move some of my stash. Shelves may be a weird thing to rent, but perfect for the odd excess of things I've accumulated. They're almost all 'smalls', so this is the right size for me. 

OK, that's it for my manic post, I'm going to go lie down now.

You might have heard I run with a dangerous crowd....

Beth told me about an estate sale which included more books than some libraries, so of course I had to stop by. This is a picture of today's haul, lots of great pages and great covers. I may be able to use most of these covers for ephemera book kits - I'm working on a batch to take to Silver Bella.

While having bagels with my sister and brother-in-law this morning, my sister asked if I want their old wood ladder. It has chipping white paint and is pretty worn...hmmm.

My BIL asked why my sister thinks I would like it and Roni said "that's the kind of thing they like" and he said "They?" and she said, "You know, that artist crowd she hangs out with."

After I finally stopped laughing and dried my eyes I told her, yes, I will take the ladder.

Shopping treasures...

Did a bit of shopping at 2 different shows today and found a few goodies...

 

I found a great mixed bag of Victorian scrap. It's so hard to resist.

 

I visited with Beth at the Old Summit show (that show gets better ever time I attend). We had a long chat and swapped Silver Bella plans.  

Aren't these keys gorgeous?   

 

I only picked up one bag of old jewelry...here are a few pieces...

 

Someone offered me a look at a cab card album priced at $200.00. Little out of my price range...

 

I found this pretty one instead...

 

A special hi to Donnie who doesn't have a blog yet. He had these great stencils and this giant stack of nature story pages and I could not resist.

 

 

Here's the album title page for you to download and play with - I think the birds are so sweet!

 

Did you notice anything odd? Not one book today. Not one.