When life hands you lemons ...

I was struck by a nasty virus during the past two weeks that pretty much kept me at home. After spending an entire week in bed, ugh, I got busy on the computer during the second week. Doing what? Thought I'd show you ...

A quartet of greeting cards from the new "Animal Attraction" line. I've been collecting quirky Victorian images of animals for a while, thinking they would become letterpress postcards. Instead, they're regular greeting cards. These are the vertical versions, there are horizontals, too. And every card in every Cards With A past line is now available in three sizes (A2, A6, A7). Yeah, it's a lot of work making the masters, but what else have I had to do lately, besides get well?!

Oh, the images are from Nov. 1888 St. Nicholas Magazine (octopus & whale); Chatterbox for Little Folks, 1883 (dog); a 1908 issue of The Chatterbox magazine (salmon); The Teachers' and Pupils' Cyclopedia, 1904 (frogs).

Gone fishin'

Whew! I just returned home after a road trip to points East that took me from Long Island to Schenectady, then, back south into Manhattan, and further south into Jersey, then, over to Philly. I managed to cram in a bit of paper hunting between visits with aunts and uncles, cousins, high school friends, and my dad, brothers and sister.

One of my finds: eight gorgeous color book plates of fish by artist Norman Erickson. That sentence makes it sound like I knew who he was. I didn't, and I didn't know where the images came from. Both were easy to find out via a quick internet search. Turns out that the plates were in a guide to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium that was published in 1933. The year before, the fish graced a series of postcards for the aquarium.

I'd love to get a look at the original watercolors, but for now, these will do. As always, how they will be used remains to be seen.