As a teacher, I still do SOME school work in June and July, but I also enjoy leafing through some of my favorite coffee table books. My husband would attest that I have way too many in my collection, but that's simply not true. Who can put a cap on inspiration? Ha! I love to read about other people with small businesses like mine and flip through pages filled with unique and interesting ways to incorporate vintage items in decorating. Seeing potentially discarded items put to use in unique settings is right up my alley. Here are a few in my vast collection all stacked up!
When I was young, I loved to collect bookmarks. The Scholastic book fairs at school always had a nice selection of bookmarks with puppies, kittens, rainbows...things an 8 year-old just loves. As I grew, I found I still loved to mark my reading material in pretty and unique ways. Along came the digital books, however, and I no longer needed bookmarks. You just put a digital tab on that Kindle download and away you went. If you are anything like me, however, I gravitated back to the basics. I still read books on my iPad, but the feel of "real" reading material just feels right. In the process of making my book journals I came to love not just the...
From time to time (usually at art shows) people ask me where I get my ideas and love of all things old/vintage. It's in my genes, I think. My parents were antique dealers (my dad was also a dentist and my mother, a nurse). They did antique shows at the Ann Arbor Antique Show in Saline, Michigan and had their own shop (The Peddler Shoppe) in Sylvania, Ohio. When I was really small my mother would keep me busy at the shop with "little guys", as she would call them. She cut tiny figures out of old cardstock and I would embellish them with pencils and crayons. I loved those "little guys" and thought my mom was the coolest for...
Every once in a while I am questioned about why I take apart and "ruin perfectly good books" for my business. Well, they are not perfectly good books when I find them. The books I like to use are the ones that are in need of rescue: the covers need cleaning, the inside pages have been loved to the point that they are brittle (or written in by small children), and loved beyond their original use. I do find other books, however, that have pages that I use in many different ways...and I keep them all. I use them in other projects, I use them to "mend" the inside covers of other books when needed and I incorporate them into my...
I LOVE spending time working on my small business. Lots of evenings, weekends and summers...lots of time during the summer. Why then? I'm a teacher! I have taught Kindergarten for 25 years at the same Catholic School in Atlanta, Georgia. I am fortunate to enjoy both my jobs! In fact, one tends to feed the other. Some of my favorite vintage paper-related projects stem from children's books, old teacher manuals, flash cards, etc. Yesterday we celebrated the birthday of Dr. Seuss. To honor him and the wonderful books he wrote and illustrated for children, I am posting a book journal I just created!