Featured Gem 8
Real Photo Postcard

‘Joyce as a Fairy’

Date: Unspecified
People: Joyce
Studio: Broothorn Studio, Melbourne (active in Australia 1900s –1940s)
Postcard Back: “Joyce as a Fairy, at Mrs Fred Fairbairn’s Ball”

After thoroughly enjoying Nichola’s last postcard swap I jumped at the chance to join in again. What I hadn’t bargained for was the busiest working month since Eloise was born. Working from home of course has pros and cons as it’s nice to have the extra cash, but horrible horrible HORRIBLE to have no time for myself! With a toddler ruling the roost, working from home really translates to working nights and weekends and I am exhausted! (hopefully this also explains the low level of activity around here). In ten days time I’ll get a breather and a chance to get stuck into some of my own projects and a couple of swaps. I cannot wait! (yes yes yes Sabine I would love to swap!)

Thirteen of these cards are now ‘winging’ their way around the globe! If the last swap was a struggle with glue…this one was a debacle with scissors! Apologies if my ‘cutting out’ is a bit tragic. I blame the fact that I’ve misplaced my ‘good’ scissors and that I was sitting in really bad light, really really late at night (ie. early morning). Maybe they have a more homemade handcrafted look because of it? Hopefully not just bad execution! I used this photo {click here} of a six year old girl taken on June 22nd 1898…108years ago almost to the day. Other ingredients: a mix of vintage and reproduction papers, buttons, eyelets and some 3D foam tape.

Embarrassingly I still haven’t done a ‘public thank you’ for the swap in May. Thanks again to all the lovely and talented girls whose work I was lucky enough to receive, they’ve been on display since the day they were delivered. I love looking at them all together! So inspiring and all so different. Click to view: nikki-shell {postcard:blog}, pyglet whispers {postcard:blog}, Cheeky Beaks {postcard:blog}, Buzzing Bee {postcard:blog}, Kitty Baroque {postcard:blog}, 6.5st {postcard:blog}, Red Instead {postcard:blog}. You can also see more —->here!

Featured Gem 5
Real Photo Postcard

‘Wings and Flowers’

Date: Unspecified
People pictured: Unidentified
Postcard Back: Foyle’s Photo Card — Studios, Liebig St Warnambool (unused)

Notes: I was beside myself with excitement when I spotted this treasure in a cabinet at my local antique store. Usually photographs of girls dressed up with fairy wings are beyond my budget, but here this one sat waiting, in a pile of old postcards priced for a song. I couldn’t wait to get it out of there for fear they’d say they’d made a mistake! There were many images of fairy girls reproduced in the masses early last century, but this one appears to be a personal portrait, not reproduced for sale, which makes it even more special.

I do also appreciate the backs of old postcards and this one is nice and decorative. I collect a lot of cards just for their typographic design. Other times it is for the postmark or the handwritten message, another dying art in today’s electronic world. Call me crazy but I also find the foxing of paper visually appealing and a great texture to add to my digital collage work.

Unfortunately I don’t have any information about the girls. I wonder if they are sisters? Most likely I am guessing. I love the flowers and ringlets…but the wings are the best bit!

Look at my little girl! I’m having a proud Mummy moment. Rohan and I finally bought a digital SLR camera to play with, A Nikon D50. I am so excited! We took it for a whirl over at Montsalvat in Eltham. I am thrilled with the results (especially considering we didn’t really know what we were doing or indeed what the camera can REALLY do!). More photos can be seen over at Eloise’s blog. She had a wonderful afternoon. The fairy dress even seemed to make her walk differently! You could tell she felt very special.

One of the things I want to do here, is share my collection of vintage photographs and ephemera with people who might appreciate their worth. I want others to value their importance in our cultural history and see the magic I see when I look at them. Often these items are filled with history. Stories involving humour, heartache and love. It sounds clich?d but they really are like a window into another era and open up the imagination. I look at them and wonder what the people were like, what their lives were about. Often the backdrops are breathtakingly beautiful and the costumes worn are elaborate and with fine detail, unlike clothes of today. Sometimes it’s something as simple as the look in someone’s eye or a phrase on the back of a postcard. I often use these items as a basis for something creative (NB: I always keep the original preserved).
It seems such a shame to keep these beauties hidden away and I am hoping some of you may enjoy them as much as I do! So here is the first instalment!

Featured Gem 1
Real Photo Postcard

‘The Bee, The Sailor,
The Clown and The Gypsy’

Date: Unspecified
People pictured: Unidentified
Postcard Back: Blank

Notes: I have a passion for collecting photographs of people in fancy dress. Often the costumes are incredibly ellaborate and sometimes the images are quite humorous. I wonder what kind of event these people were going to (if any!). What was their relationship to one another. I imagine what fun they must have had getting dressed up. The lovely thing about some of these fancy dress images is that they are usually of people having fun, having the time of their life. Would any events on this night change the course of their lives?

I like the fact that the girl dressed as a bee (well I think she is a bee??) is slightly blurred, as if she is ‘buzzing’ !