Last week my sister, my dear dear sister who is always bringing over little offerings to my art stash, brought over the most lovely present - a whole box FULL of vintage playing cards. The cards seemed to range from the early 50s to the early 70s, with styles ranging from sweet muted cameo silhouettes to day-glo butterflies on woodgrain background. WOW. See the picture below, but only if you want to weep.
And this was just about a third of them. It was like Christmas morning on a Thursday evening in March.
And what do I do with these? I look at them. I take them out of the boxes and I caress them lovingly. I lay them on top of different colors of cardstock and patterned paper. I even hold punched pieces of paper over them as "stencils" to see what it would look like IF I punched a shape out of them.
But I don't cut them. I don't use them. Why?
A couple of reasons. The first is that my OCD side knows that using just one playing card on an art project will render the deck incomplete. And second, my inner critic -- remember her? Yeah, she's still around, though all your kind words have taken away her megaphone so she can't scream at me any more. Now she just utters a tired little whisper now and then. Anyway, my inner critic tells me that the resulting work may not be so spectacular as to justify breaking up a said deck of cards.
Sooooo..... to make me actually break up one of these sets of cards, I thought it might be fun to have another blog giveaway. Post a comment to this blog by midnight on Friday night and give me some sort of encouragement to use these things, and then I'll choose one commenter at random to receive a blank greeting card made with one of the vintage playing cards. (Blank, meaning unused, as in it's ready for you to write your own message and send it out in the mail to someone else.)
6 comments:
Oh, I couldn't possibly enter your contest because I know exactly how you feel and it is just too hard!!! LOL! And those vintage cards are so lovely!!
And thanks for the tip about saving my daughters dresses to wear as shirts over jeans. Too stinking cute!! I never think like that!!
Okay, listen to ME--not IC. Pull a card out of each deck and TEAR IT UP. Wantonly. No project, no idea, no purpose. Just shred it and throw it away. TA-DA! Freedom!
You must overcome, sweet Annie. The Universe needs your beautiful creations. Your lovely cards need to move out of the protection of your stash and into the world where they can be loved and treasured and enjoyed.
There are always more cards. But there can be only so many Annie-originals in this lifetime. Go forth and increase their number.
Since I won the last drawing, please give somebody else a chance. But listen to me anyway!
XXOO
You can't split up a deck of antique cards!?! BUT, you can make a collage out of a whole deck, so they remain together. Lets see your inner critic come up with something against that! (and if it does, I've got a loaded tiel with it's name on it!)
These are GORGEOUS! These are unique and would make amazing cards, tags, promo items for shop, and the list goes on and on. Please do us all a favor and use your magic on these cards and list stuff in your shop made from them. It only kills me to not see some wonderful items you've turned these into in your shop!
Sing that song, my hoarding sister!!! My mom and I are trying to start our business cuz of all the piles of STUFF in her shop that we need to do something with.
I found a fabulous newspaper from the 30's that I'm afraid to cut into. WHY??? dunno.
The way I see it is this: The gorgeous, amazing, totally rockin' card collection is only cool if you share it with the world. Sitting in your craft room, only you will be able to appreciate it's coolness. You have to play fair - share your goodies!!!
I think you should do something similar to what Denise said but...instead of shredding one card from each deck, take one card out of each deck and make a pack of random cards out of it, and then mail that out to somebody as blog candy. Or mail a few to more than one commenter. That way, you get freedom, but you don't have to destroy any cool cards, and your fellow crafters get a chance to play with a few cards too.
You are so talented and creative. Just listen to your muse, not your IC, and go with it. I know something good will come of it.
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