freebie vintage ephemera

Some old ephemera from my husband's side of the family. Check out the hospital bill - it cost $60.75 to have a baby in 1931. Unreal. I don't expect that you can have anything done in a hospital these days that costs only $60.75.

Double click on an image, then right click to save the largest size. All were scanned at 300dpi. Please do not sell these images, altho you may sell artwork made with them. Try printing them on vellum or tracing paper, then collaging with them. The tracing paper, especially, lets the background show thru.

More coming tomorrow, including some png files for you digital folks.

bookmarks for swap

10 followers! Whoopee!

Back in blogging mode again after a week back East visiting my cousin and the week before that trying to think of every conceivable thing that might happen while I was gone and writing out instructions on how to do it. I'm not indispensable at work but damn close LOL.

Karen at Mail Me Some Art has various swaps going all the time. One of the current ones is bookmarks, made any old way you like, as long as they fit in a book. I got fired up at the last minute and made a couple. Started with 140lb watercolor paper, then collaged with old and new papers, some inking. Punched a hole and strung some old wrinkled cotton lace thru.

The woman holding the baby pig is my mom, circa 1940. The brown ad paper is a bag from a shop in Ohio where I bought some earrings. The map is an old map of Oregon. The little farm scenes are from a page from and old French(?) agriculture book. The number circles were something Mary Ann Moss offered on her blog a while back.

I actually don't use a regular bookmark like these because they can fall out of your book too easily and nothing ticks me off more than losing my place. I use a paperclip. So maybe I'll attach a paperclip to the back of the bookmarks I get back.

duct tape journal swap

front cover

Karen at Mail Me Some Art runs all sorts of fun swaps. So far I've only done a couple postcard swaps cause that's mostly what she offered. But recently she did a survey to see what else people might like to swap and based on those results, she just posted several new swaps. The duct tape journal swap caught my eye as I had made one before and enjoyed it. The one for the swap is even easier as it has a no-stitch binding.

I inked thru a diamond stencil with pink and tan Distress ink.
Love how it echoes the opposite page.

I cut a heavy piece of cardboard, glued pretty scrapbook paper to one side of each piece, glued a neat picture from an art book to the other sides, then taped them together with checkerboard duct tape, leaving about half an inch in the middle.

Pretty cute already. Then I cut a bunch of papers to size, folded them in half to make a signature, and held the whole thing together with a rubber band. Couldn't be easier. Actually, it could be easier because I wasn't smart enough to choose my papers first and then cut the cover to match. Next time.

Then I did some stenciling on a few of the white pages (the backs of the scrapbook paper) and added some fun tapes to others. I really like the finished journal cause you can add or remove pages, you can add more signatures with more rubber bands - very versatile. You could also use ribbon or yarn or baker's twine or whatever you want to hold the papers in. I won't get one back until late in November and by then it'll be a real surprise cause I'll have forgotten all about it.

inside back cover

inside front cover

spine

back cover

more gypsy diaries spreads

I've done several more spreads in the altered book that I'm using for the gypsy diaries workshop. Half the fun is looking for images, thinking about layouts, cutting out all the elements. I'm all about the process when it comes to mixed media. The finished product is great, but the amount of UFOs I have laying around makes it clear that I enjoy the doing more than the done.

This one ended up being a color study simply because I like the label, which used to be one piece, and decided I was in the mood for collage. The torn book page was left over from when I needed rough book page circles for something. I colored it with distress stain, cut the flowers from one of my old books, and found the gypsy girl sticker on a 7 Gypsys sheet. The bit of paper upper left is from the class papers. It's more glittery in person and altho orange is maybe my least favorite color, I quite like this one.

I've been into horses my whole life, from when I galloped around the house with a newspaper tail pinned to my butt, whinnying at my mom when I was hungry, to competing in hunter/jumper in my twenties, to trail riding with my friend Babs for 20 years on her exceptional horses. So I've been collecting horse pictures with no particular plan for them. When I started the gypsy book, I knew a horse spread would be part of it since gypsies traveled by horse drawn wagon. I thought I'd journal more on these pages but I'm ending up being happy with them without a lot of writing. 

Many of the gypsy-ish images I found had them holding instruments of some sort so there will be a few music spreads. This on uses an old library card pocket and a tag. The more spreads I do, the less this becomes a gypsy woman book and the more it becomes a gypsy themed art journal. Which is fine. It's not like I had a bunch of stories all figured out in advance. Which is maybe the problem haha. Whatever. I'm thoroughly enjoying working in it, using class elements and ones I already have. It will be a fun book when it's done. I think there are 38 spreads to do, even after tearing out a lot of pages and gluing 3 or 4 pages together. I'm thinking of a table of contents in the front...

This is part of a quote supplied with the class. I like the entire thing but didn't feel like writing it all out. I may put it on the inside cover. I love this blue, with a bit of the book text showing thru. The woman looks like a poetess to me. Wish I was better at different types of lettering. Need to practice that.

affirmation deck swap, mine

When I came across this, I thought these people are crazy, making 52 cards for a swap. But I went back to the post a couple times, looking at all the cards on the ring, wondering what was on each one. Then I went off and looked at the tutorial links. By that point I knew I was gonna sign up for the darn thing. The saving grace here was that in a few days my husband was going out of town for nine days. With all that art time, I figured I could knock them out. Besides, one of the tutorials talked about how she did hers all in one afternoon or something ridiculous, so how hard could it be...


Fast forward to last nite and I am indeed done with all 52 (plus 3 extra just to be safe) cards. Just need to stick my contact info stickers on the back and get them in the mail. The swap isn't until mid-November so I have a while to wait till I get mine back but when I do, it will be one card each from 52 other artists. I think that was the real thing that got me to sign up - all that different art. Most swaps you get 1 or 3 items back. But 52? Couldn't resist.

I whacked up a bunch of cereal boxes. We eat cold cereal at my house at the rate of 3-4 boxes a week, so I had plenty in the pantry to steal boxes from. (So now there's a bunch of unmarked bags of cereal in the pantry (because who would have the brains to mark them before destroying the boxes??) and you're never sure what you're gonna get.)


I cut them to roughly the size of multiples of 2.5x3.5 (ATC size), then glued pretty scrapbook paper on the printed sides. Next day I gessoed the brown side just to get a good base on them. Then got out the metallic paints and went to town. That's a really fun time, smushing the colors around to see what you get. Then I stamped and stencils with a few favorites. Let them dry well and cut them into individual cards. Quite a pile. I was briefly impressed with myself lol.

the backs

Figuring out the affirmations (they all had to be different) was the tough part for me. I'm not religious, not much into contemplating my life and what I'm doing with each day, don't examine my feelings a whole lot - so I looked thru a couple books I had for good thoughts and motivational expressions. Also cruised thru a few quotes sites, culling the ones I was comfortable with. I printed them on tracing paper, then cut them into strips. Got out the gel medium, turned on the Ryder Cup and sat there for 2 hours cutting and gluing. Wasn't too bad and as I worked I imagined a hundred other artists elsewhere in the world all doing the same thing.

the leftovers

THEN... I hauled them all out to the patio table and sprayed them with high gloss varnish to seal them. I'm pleased with them, glad to have them all done, and am looking forward to getting mine back. I don't know if working on one a week will help make me a nicer person but it will be fun to see the art.

a shopping I did go...

A couple times a year my husband takes off for a week or two at sea on a big fishing boat. Great fun for him and a break from household chores for me cause while he's gone, I don't do anything. I don't cook, clean, do laundry, dishes - *nothing*. I eat cereal or Taco Bell and play in the studio during the hours I'm awake and not at work. It's a blast and my week started on Saturday. Yesterday a new art friend came over at noon and finally pried herself away at 5 only because she had dinner company coming in 30 minutes and hadn't even begun the lasagna yet. We had a really good time and it's great to finally have found a local person with many of the same interests. And she lives about 8 doors down.

Today I took myself on a tour of the arty stores in a nearby town that I rarely get to. Let's see what I came home with...

This was the haul from Jo-Ann's. Some of those cool idea-ology metal tags with words and numbers on them, and a few more colors of metallic paint for my Gyspy Diary altered book.

This came home with me from Hobby Lobby. A very cool (and half price) sign that says 'color outside the lines.' Also some Chinese brushes, stamp carving material, tracing paper, black and white Stabilo-type pencils (can't find the real thing anywhere), a new brayer, and more paint. Didn't know there were so many colors.

 And this is the Aaron Bros pile. I hit the big time here. There was a bunch of Tim Holtz stuff in the HALF PRICE BIN!!! Yay. I ended up dumping it all on the floor and looking at it as I put it back. It was a temptation to just buy it all and parcel it out to friends but I restrained myself. Bought two packs of fragments, an edge rougher-upper thingie, embossing powder, slide glass, slide frames, and a 7 Gypsies pack of letters/numbers. Only the book was regular price but I had a 50% off coupon so I made out on it too. Hadn't seen this one at Barnes & Noble and it looks like fun. I spent $40 for $80 worth of stuff. Very satisfying.

 Tomorrow's it's back to work, but there's still this evening - Monday night football, cold pizza and making art!

Gypsy Diaries - travel

Did another spread in the Gypsy book on Sunday. I had in my head that she would be a musician but then when I went looking for other elements for the page, I saw the compass rose; and I'd just come across some old stamps in my stash, so she turned into a traveler instead. And the butterfly... well, I don't know. I'm not really a butterfly person but the page needed something more. I doodled all over it (the butterfly) with metallic markers and it looks ok there, altho the right side seems kinda bare still.

Thank god for Michaels 50% off coupons cause I really *needed* the Sakura metallic gel pens for this project. Much better at $7.50 than $14.99. Even at $7.50 I hope they last a good long while. I used them for the lettering.

Anyway, I like the colors in this one. I'm trying not to be all matchy matchy with this like I have a tendency to be, but I still used gold and turquoise elements and markers to go with the girl's clothes. It all shows up well against that plum colored metallic background paint.