Random acts of paper

Lately, I've been lucky to receive terrific paper donations from friends. The gifts have ranged from vintage greeting cards and stacks of savings stamp booklets to strips of vintage wall paper and dozens of vintage paper dolls.

The circa 1952 birthday boy on the tag above came from a box stuffed with treasures that Cincinnati Enquirer TV/radio/media reporter/critic John Kiesewetter had carried around in his trunk for months. The material was lovingly and selectively packed up from his late father's home. 

A zippered linen bag crammed with savings stamps came courtesy of Barbara Henshaw, who had seen my highly-organized stash in the studio, as well as the Mad Women collages in which savings stamps play a prominent role. I'm just starting new Mad Women pieces, so the stamps arrived at a perfect time.

Speaking of Mad Women, I just finished some new tags, above, that are Mad Womenesque and that include some of the vintage wallpaper that graphic designer, printer, Seed Bomb entrepreneur and blogger Maya Drozdz dropped off last week. They'll be turning up in some larger pieces, too.

Finally, there are the 1960s-era paper dolls that marketing wiz Mary Lynn Tangi gave to me a few months ago. They're now on the work table - those are three of the four, singing Lennon Sisters above - and will be starring in the new Mad Women collages. It was easy to tell by how carefully the dolls had been stored - with clothes, accessories, original books - that Mary Lynn cherished them. 

I find it fun giving new life to just about any paper, but there's an extra layer of satisfaction when the paper comes from people I know.

Sign o' the times

Just had to post an image of the spiffy sign that I had printed for last week's City Flea. It's 2 feet x 3 feet and is propped against the wall, because I couldn't get the easel I brought with me to stand up on the little bump out in my space.

The original design was postcard-sized and announced my move this spring to a bigger studio at Brazee Street Studios. With a bit of tweaking, the designed morphed into a general poster. This is one reason to save graphic files at a high-resolution ... you never know how they might be used!

Cards With a Past ® are downtown now

The newest spot to purchase greeting cards from my Cards With a Past® lines is 5th Street Gallery - my first downtown outlet. Last night, I loaded one arm of a card rack with 21 styles, and plan to switch them out as we go along. They are printed on thick card stock, and packaged with an envelope in an acid-free clear bag ($3.50 each).

The cards use copyright-free images from my archive. So, how can I copyright them? Good question.
It may not look like it, but a LOT of work is done on the images after they are scanned - at a high resolution - into the computer.

Generally, the originals are dense engravings and I get in between the lines to make sure they reproduce with clarity. Some are still works in progress as I go back in and clean them up further by removing part of the image. It can take weeks to get an image where I want it. But it's more than worth the time in the end result - and that end result is a new image with my stamp on it.

There's another twist to the cards. The back of each card includes an excerpt from the publication the image is from, along with bibliographic details on the original publication. Sometimes, there is an additional image, such as below on the back of the "you can handle it" card.

I'm still dreaming up more and having so much fun doing it!    

Costume drama, and mystery

Wish I could tell you where these spectacular women are from, but I haven't a clue. They're part of the humungous new stash and were in a pile of pages that had been a book about costumes. But, no title page. No engraver listed on the pages. No publisher either. If you have spotted these some place else, please, please, please let me know.

Each is hand-painted and a fairly sizable 9" x12" or so. My first thought was to have them floating. Now, I am thinking they'd be swell cake toppers. I have an exhibit coming up in February at Cincinnati's Bonbonerie bakery's cafe and had been thinking about a new collage take on cakes anyway - and calling the exhibit, wait for it, yes, Let Them Eat Cake ...  

The stash just got larger

What can I say?!? I succumbed when a friend told me that he was destashing his long-time print collection. Once the drawers of the flat files were opened, I was a goner. Not a good time to even think about sorting it all, but it MUST be done. There are Open Studios at my studio home - Brazee Street Studios - Friday night. Aieeeeee.