Un petit cadeau -- of postcards

One of the neat things about sharing your art through the internet is that other artists reach out to you and connect with you over shared styles and interests. That's how I came to be in contact with Trishia at the French Kissed Postcards shop online.Trishia and I both love collage art from vintage paper sources. We initially connected through our interest in Mary Green's glue book art, and then I learned that Trishia herself is a wonderful source of some really gorgeous vintage postcards.But first let me explain about my interest in postcards.I use postcards a lot in my artwork. When considering a postcard I look for several things:

• The image on the front: is it in color or black and white (I look for both kinds). Is it interesting?
• The back for writing: is it blank or has someone written a note? What does the handwriting look like? Is it legible? What language is it in?
• A stamp: does the postcard have any stamps? More than one? Are the stamps attractive and in one piece? Is there a postmark? Is it legible?
• A date: is there a date either written by the author or on the postmark?

Sometimes I place the entire postcard in my journal, in a page pocket for example.Other times I will glue a postcard down so that just a single side is showing. I do that if I am making a larger collage and need only one side as an element in the over all piece.It's handy when you have a bunch of old postcards and either the picture on the front is ugly or boring and therefore you don't feel guilty about covering it up permanently, or if the note on the writing side is dull (or it's blank), then I don't feel guilty about gluing it down.Trishia knows I use a lot of postcards and she sent me a packet of vintage postcards that are just beautiful. She sent me some that are a perfect example of classic penmanship and some that are written extra fancy.Here's one with a nice illustration and a stamp with postmark all on the front. I haven't see many like this.She also sent some with neat illustrations or photos. My absolute favorite are postcards with architecture. This one is of architecture with the bonus of writing on the same side. Wow!Trishia specializes in French postcards. At her shop she sells vintage postcards as well as digital images of postcards for quick download. Those are useful too for printing at home and using for personal projects. Check out her shop if you are looking for some really unique pieces of postcard art.She sent me more postcards but I didn't photograph all of them. I did take a picture of the card she sent them in. It's so pretty I'm tempted to use this in a collage too!