Scraps

I buy these old scraps sometimes when I see them - useful for certain types of collaging. Some Xmas images here seems appropriate.

Scenic Views

I have a great big box of vintage postcards that I have collected and and/or purchased for resale. Last night I had fun picking out FIVE postcards to glue together (actually FOUR parts of different postcards are glued to ONE "giant" postcard, a view of the Boulder Dam, the only bit of it seen in this collage in the upper right.

The man with the camera is from a vintage travel brochure.

Collage Kits

Some original Collage Kits I made back in the 90's for a small press fair packed full of ephemera and other paper clippings.

big tooth, big shark

The notion that not just humans, but other animals on the planet, leave ephemera in their wake is fascinating to me. So to celebrate one of the more spectacular examples of Nature's ephemera, I photographed a fossil tooth I have of C. megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, considered by most taxonomists to be an ancestor of today's great white shark, C. carcharias. If you want to read about Megalodon, check out this article. Why does a shark tooth count as ephemera? Because shark teeth grow in what's referred to as a "conveyer belt," each tooth that gets shed being quickly replaced by a newer, sharper one that rolls forward into place.

As for the big shark that shed this tooth, the following is a useful diagram. The red and grey sharks are the conservative and maximum estimates of Megalodon's size, the maximum being 20 meters (67 feet). (!) The violet shark is a whale shark, the largest shark extant today. The green shark is a great white, and there's a black human figure for scale.                                                                            

 

My own Megalodon tooth is not all that large: just 4 3/4" (12.1 cm) tall. They can be as tall as 7 1/2" (19.1 cm). I purposely photographed my tooth with some shadow showing, to give you a sense of what it's like in 3-D.

Rest of the collage: Background from an old map of southern India. Ephemera include advertisements, greeting cards, fortune-telling cards, Loteria cards, pharmacy labels, ration tickets, other tickets, and cancelled postage stamps. Artistamps & their cancellations: bananas by Anna Banana, bunny-cum-airplane by the fabulous C. T. Chew.

The Medicine

I am also a collector of 'thingies'., someone who never leaves a rusty nail unnoticed.
Or stuff I find hidden in the pages of old books .... like some of these objects....
a 'medical' note dated 1930 ..... some 'free' orange juices bottles', one for each month, which enables me to buy you all a drink ..... cheers!

Collage Diary

Collage diary pages from around the mid 90's. Used an old book to collect found scraps each day on my walks from home to work etc. Was hoping to continue it for a whole year but got bored and the book was so full it would hardly close!

Ephemera -- Prayer Cards

I order a steady supply of weird things from eBay.  Last year that included a packet of 25 or so sepia-colored vintage prayer cards.  They're small, about 3x4", and these date from the middle 1900's.  I'm collaging (desecrating?) them with some anatomical cuttings and other scraps, for a little book project I have in mind.  The cards are a centuries-old tradition in the Catholic Church.  They typically show a religious image on the front with a verse or prayer on the reverse, and are used to commemorate special moments (First Communion, Confirmation, funerals, etc.).  Many of them are quite beautiful.