Monday 11 February 2013

Finding vintage ephemera and then not using it!

At the weekend I went to the charity shop to drop off a load of books that I no longer wanted / needed. We are moving house soon hopefully so we are starting to slim down and when we looked at our books we realised we had so many that we are probably unlikely to read again so it made sense to send them on to someone who would.

I use book text quite a lot in my creations but the one book I have seems to be lasting me forever so I thought it was pointless hoarding more at this stage. Except...

Whilst I was in there dropping off I stupidly decided to have a puruse after all you never know what treasures you might find and inspirations for other crafty projects. I do love vintage books and thought vintage children's books would be lovely ephemera and make a change from the book I am currently using.

I purchased two Enid Blytons book for £1 ($1.57 for my USA followers) for the pair. Cheap as chips as they say. Thing is I now can't bear to use them as what I didn't realise is they are in immaculate condition. Normally when I buy children's books from a charity shop they tend to be ripped or drawn in, especially when they are old ones. But oh no these are perfect. I love books and cannot justify destroying a perfectly good book so they are going to sit on my book shelf looking pretty next to a Mr Pinkwhistle book I already had from my childhood.

Where vintage ephemera in the way of books is concerned, I think it is going to have to come from really worn out books!

Who else is with me on that?


3 comments:

  1. hi Anna just came via facebook group AG , great blog and i totally relate to what u said about the books , i got a copy of Alice in Wonderland and its quite old and in great condition so i could not alter it lol must draw the line somewhere , i do love altering books though its like giving them new life....

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  2. I love Alice in Wonderland always have done since my Daddy got me a copy when I was a teeny one! I have a collection of Alice books and I love all the different variations. I would certainly alter vintage books if they were in bad repair but I just can't bring myself to do it to books that are in really good condition. It seems wrong somehow!

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  3. I totally relate! I can't stand to tear up or draw in books unless they are about business, or economics or something and not tooooo old. Recently I actually started to slap paint onto the first page of a 1972 book on Raku ceramics, and that's as far as I got. Could not bear to do anything else. I'm even having a hard time tearing up my physics text book from the 60s! good grief.

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