Colour Collaborative: August
Photo Credit: Lizard Lighthouse and Bay - Richard Ellis
Butterflies, books, medals, various types of toys and more disturbingly, skulls, seem to be the 'top hits' on Google if you do an image search for 'collection'. I suppose those are fairly typical, along with comics, stamps and thimbles.
For a moment I was at a bit of a loss with this month's prompt. At first I didn't believe I ever collected anything in my life. Yarn and fabric these days are, I confess, building up but even they didn't seem to qualify. They are bought with the intention of being used on some or other project, for the most part at least and surely a collection is something different.
A collection is made purely for the sake of having the things all together in one place, to own them maybe, to seek out every different type or style or size or issue of a thing. I wouldn't go into a yarn shop and buy a ball of wool purely because I haven't yet got that particular shade of green in my stash for example, with no other intention to just add to the range of greens I already have on display at home.
Then I remembered the postcards.
When I was a little tot of appropriate age, I went, like many of you, to Brownies. One of the badges, I can't remember what it was called, 'collectors badge' probably, required you to take in a collection of some 'things' in to be viewed by the powers that were, in order to win the badge. Rubbers and pencils were popular I seem to remember. I didn't collect rubbers, or pencils, or anything else for that matter and postcards were suggested to me as a suitable type of thing to start collecting.
I don't recall being too enamored with the idea, but, no doubt with suitable parental nagging, I began to buy a postcard from everywhere we went. Holiday towns and villages, historic houses and castles, scenic gardens, beach fronts, museums etc. Wherever we went, I got a card. The two above were absolutely typical of many that I owned. In fact, I'm sure I had the Dorset one, it looks so familiar. Then every so often I would have to sit down and glue them into a large scrapbook and label each one to say where I had got it.
By the time I had a sufficient amount to present to the Brownies for my badge (one scrapbook full), I was hooked. Or at least, the habit had become so ingrained that it stayed with me throughout my childhood. I filled quite a few more scrapbooks and would always be on the look out for cards in a new or different style or unlike any I'd seen before. Poldark Mine was a novelty I remember because you could post the card to yourself using the underground postbox. I was most excited by that and had to use sellotape to stick that card in - you had to be able to flap it over and see the postmark of course!
Long after I stopped bothering with the scrapbooks I still bought the postcards, well into my twenties. In the college years I started collecting cards of artworks from galleries and these old style advertisements were hugely popular with me when I was studying graphic design. In fact I have some framed and on my walls now because I still love them. I suppose it is no surprise that they also create the palette of colours I like the best too.
I don't buy postcards any more, I don't know when I finally decided to stop, I suppose when I kept finding little paper bags filled with cards I hadn't looked at in years and started to wonder why I still bothered.
All these years later though, I do still have the urge to go the gift shop and check the cards.
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Don't forget to check out the other great 'Colour Collaborative' blogs
for more of today's great posts...
Annie at Annie Cholewa
Gillian at Tales From a Happy House
Jennifer at Thistlebear
Claire at Above the River
and our guest poster...
Caroline at Scraps of Us
our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.
S x
♥
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I have scrap books of postcards from my family holidays too. I used to love coming home and spending some time over the next few days filling up a new scrapbook and writing in it. Happy days. :) x
ReplyDeletePostcards are great, have you come across Postcrossing? That's really reignited my love for postcards! I'm a Brownie leader, and there is still a Collectors badge, although I haven't seen a collection of postcards for a while!
ReplyDeleteI love your postcards and color palettes especially the one from your vintage ad posters. I see a blanket in there some place!
ReplyDeleteOh yes, these are "your" colours, aren't they, full of vintage shades and colours I've come to associate with you. :-) I did that same Brownies badge and collected rubbers, but I have to confess I have a weakness for buying postcards in art galleries and have PILES of them knocking around the house in various paper bags and drawers. Some I send, some I frame, but most seem to just sit there. xx
ReplyDeleteI too had scrapbooks with postcards stuck into them!! I have no idea why I collected them, I don't think it was for Brownies although I was at that age when I collected them. These days I keep postcards that are sent to us on the fridge for a few weeks and then let them go. Any that are left over from holidays I bring home and like you have some in little paper bags. In my most recent tidy up I gathered them all together and they are in with all my greetings cards in the hope that I will send them off to people someday as thank you notes or something similar! It is a funny business this collecting lark! xx
ReplyDeleteThis all sounds so familiar. I'm not sure when I started collecting postcards, or why. Then as I got older they became arty, and like you, I used to find the little bags with a collection of postcards inside just waiting to be framed.
ReplyDeleteHow funny, I just commented over on Above the River that I am not really a collector but rather a hoarder, only to come here and realise that I used to be a collector. A collector of postcards that is. I no longer collect postcards but the odd one that flutters through the letterbox still gets a place on the fridge for a wee while. Thank you for this post, it made me think about my childhood and adolescence, not something I often do these days. Cx
ReplyDeleteI've been having trouble commenting here lately and now Disquis seems to think I've opened a new Disquis account. All very odd. Anyway ...
ReplyDeleteNow I see those postcards in that last pic your personal colour aesthetic just makes so much sense ... certainly of the palettes you've shared here that last is the one that most appeals to me and seems most you. The technicolour of the first postcards on the other hand, although perhaps less represented in your project colour choices, has the same vintage feel that I see in what you make. Maybe that first Brownie Guide collection was actually the start of your graphic design career! Great post :)
Oh yes the Collectors Badge. I have one too and I collected postcards. I seem to recall collecting ten objects of interest to another pack? I still collect postcards, sunsets which cover a door to stop people walking into it and fabric artists cards, every stitching event seems to have a stall where someone has printed their work on a postcard, which being all I can afford.
ReplyDeleteAll postcards will be come valuable now we all have mobile phones and Facebook!
I really enjoyed this because it reminded me that I used to collect postcards too. It was a good way to have an inexpensive souvenir, especially if you hadn't brought a camera with you. I really like your framed postcards; I love vintage advertising art. The colors and stylized look of those postcards work well with your crochet and knitting style, I think.
ReplyDeleteI fell pray to the postcard collecting as well! I just can't seem to throw them out, but I love the idea of framing them!
ReplyDeleteYou've just reminded me that me and my friend used to collect those little plastic vegetables and fruit that you could stick on the top of your pencil. Funny what memories pop up isn't it. I love the advert cards, they're really striking, especially the Lime Juice one. They all look so good displayed together like that. CJ xx
ReplyDeleteI still have all the postcards I collected as a child and many others that I bought later. I was sent quite few by family and friends who were on holiday. I kept them in boxes because some had wonderful stamps and now have them in albums. Two from Spain with photos of flamenco dancers have fabric machine stitched onto them. More recently I found that postcards that were photographs taken during WW1 as souvenirs by British soldiers turn up at second hand book fairs. I have wonderful one of a group of them in what looks like a shabby photographer's studio. The man at the centre has the best ever handle bar moustache. I have no idea who they are because their insignia is too small to make out. I sometimes wonder how many of them made it home. I also have an Edwardian one that was sent to an address in my area where the house still exists.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, my Nan used to have some of those cards of the flamenco dancers with material skirts, that she brought back from Spain! Funnily enough I not long ago spoke about those very things with another lady who had fond memories of them too. I always loved those cards. Thanks so much for sharing your own card collections with us!
ReplyDeleteSandra x
Ah, your memory is much better than mine I see! Yes, it is nice to have a little something to take away that doesn’t cost the earth but yes, you are right, I suppose with all the ways of communicating that we have now postcards will start to disappear. Bit of a sad thought.
ReplyDeleteS x