2009-11-05

Free Images & feeling the Christmas spirit....

I like Halloween but I LOVE Christmas ! Though I'm not yet ready to haul out the Christmas decorations, I am feeling in the mood to create some goodies for my shop.

So I'm going to make a few 'cute' Christmas brooches, using cardstock & various bits & bobs found around my art room --things like vintage Christmas cards, broken jewelry bits, flowers and more. Of course you mustn't forget the glitter !
My first brooch is almost done, but below the cardinal is the beginnings of it (vintage card bits,stars cut from a vintage candle tin wraparound). It now has flowers,glitter, a heart earring and a shiny coating of gloss ( fake resin ). I may add a small piece of ribbon to transform the brooches into ornaments for the tree.
The cardinal and flower will be part of another brooch. Fun !!



These next 6 images are scanned 1950's-early 60's Christmas card covers. They were purchased super cheap from my parents next door neighbor, who was a packrat ! She loved her thrift shops,garage sales and even bought a ton of stuff from the old shopping channel. She was so much of a packrat that about 20 yrs. ago her house suffered a fire, because of items piled up near the furnace :( Thankfully there was more smoke damage than fire but a LOT of her stuff had to be discarded in a large dumpster outside her garage. So my mom walked over one day and took a peek in the dumpster ! She brought home a couple of items, a porcelain bowl, some ugly brass planter with lions and doves carved into the brass, etc...
As much as it might have been fun for my mom to go dumpster diving ( and believe me I felt the temptation too, she had a lot of wonderful treasures ), I couldn't do it. It was after all, still the neighbors stuff ! If I had found an item and was able to clean it up, I would have given it back to her. But that's the way I work.
ANYWAY. About 5 years ago she got to the point where she had to have constant help, so it was time to find a care home. One of her sons had a huge garage sale. There were so many wonderful treasures, from Mr.Bean bears ( she usually would get more than one if she could ) to full bottles of unopened makeup to old bottles and more. I still kick myself for some of the things I passed on ( like more vintage cards and a Mr.Bean bear ), but am very happy with what I did find. One of these days I'll post images of 6 unique wine bottles from France. Each of them is dressed up in clothes and the bottle stops are handcarved wood faces. The best thing about them ? Each face has one large winking eye ! I've perused the internet trying to find anything about them, so far no luck.
The only sad thing about the garage sale....her son had no idea the value of some of her things, so it all went soooo cheaply. He didn't really care anyway and I wondered if his mom ever found out. Lots of very happy buyers that's for sure !

So these cards are on very thin paper and I think some of them may have had removable inserts. I saved the images at 300 dpi ( dots per inch ), which I've read is supposedly the best size to print out. You can also access them on my Flickr site:

If you do end up using these in art, etc...I would love to know and see a pic. or two :)

Enjoy ♥





3 comments:

Rainey J. Dillon said...

Great pics Tracy! I'm in a panc trying o get stuff done for the Cristmas Fairs here-Saturday I have to have some Christmas creations ready! I have er..ONE! Oh Gawd ONE! unbelievable & now that I have an extra overhead. Send me some cheery Christmas muse over here sweety wouldja?
Rainey

Furniture removalist said...

Lovely card images, the drawings on it really portray the essence of Christmas.

retail jobs said...

I like the cards, it looks very pretty and the images are joyful.