ode to old postcards

Alright, as promised, your weekend starts here!
It's Friday (hooray!) and time for our second challenge.

There's just something really nostalgic and cool about vintage postcards. The art/photos on the front, the handwriting on the back - stories from vacations, notes from pen-pals, words of wisdom from friends. Short and sweet but full of memories.


My dad is my favorite postcard writer. He still sends them to us when he goes on trips. He mails them to my daughter after we visit. He's old school, uses words like 'davenport' instead of 'couch' and doesn't have an email account. I love that. He also has the best handwriting ever - these notes are a very cool thing to have and I'll keep them forever.

So our challenge for you this week is to dig up some vintage postcards. From your childhood, from your parents and grandparents, from an old box in the garage or basement. Or go to a thrift store and dig through their boxes of old paper treasures. I was lucky enough to score several of these postcard folder-mailers at one of our local shops.

There's some amazing artwork on these things. If you find something too special to use, just scan it and use a print. But there's something extra nifty about using the real deal and feeling the 'oldness' in your hands.

Now anything goes!

* Use two vintage postcards as front and back covers to make a little pocket journal.

* Pile up a whole stack to make a mini book.

* Take just one and make a small scrap page - maybe write a postcard to yourself.

* Use masking tape to stick a postcard in your journal, and use your handwriting all around it.

* Find vacation photos and postcards from the place you visited to make a little book about your trip.

* Collect special family postcards (or funny ones from friends) and compile them with notes about what was said and the memories associated with them.

* Find a cool old postcard, write a note to a friend and mail the sucker. Real mail rocks.

Here's what I made. It's a vacation mini book about our trip to San Diego this past summer. I used one of the postcard folder things as the cover, and used several postcards as pages inside. [Believe it or not, I packed 50 photos into this baby.]





(wow! how amazing is jen's book! blimey!)

And here's Kim's project!

I just made a little address book for myself, using some old postcards I found at my local charity shop. Some of them are of where I live, but decades ago. It's really interesting to see how Bristol has changed.
(i'm sorry for the poor lighting on these guys.)








(Genius idea, Kim!)

Now go on and make something of your own. Link it up here before Friday, November 7th for a chance to win this super retro prize pack, including some goodies from HeyJenRenee.

We'll post the winner with our next challenge!

Don't be shy, soulies - add your projects to our Flickr group! And if you didn't have a chance to get to our first prompt this time but want to do it later, please still link up your projects - any time! We absolutely love, love, love to see what you've made!

Oh yes, and our winner from our first challenge? (No, we didn't forget!) We chose hollysarah for her stellar photos on this gorgeous page.

(but we loved everyones, it was so cool to see how different everyone's responses were!) Email your addy to Kim at kim [at] smithdata.com and she'll send you some of her fabulous Vespa-pa-pa papers + Banter. [You lucky girl!]