How Vintage Am I

Last week I was listening to an episode of Paperclipping Roundtable (while running a 5K on the track at the gym), and as usual sparked some creative thoughts (and really, really made me want to scrap). Tim Holtz was the guest, and so of course the topic was vintage style. I hadn't expected to be very interested in the topic- after all, I like to scrap with bright colors and lots of white space, and vintage is all about being cluttered and muted and having all the edges inked in brown, right?

Wrong. Oh, so wrong. It turns out that I do like vintage-style scrapping, just not that kind of vintage.

I'm actually more this kind of vintage...

...which I think qualifies as retro. This photo was taken with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone, which I became obsessed with (thanks to this post by Shimelle Laine) at about the same time as I listened to that PRT episode. Yes, the app intentionally makes your photos look like they're taken with a toy camera, but since iPhone photos are often pretty bad to begin with, why not go all the way with it, right? I totally love the washed "70's" look it gives photos.

And then I looked at the last couple of scrapbook pages I've had in the works and started to pick out various "retro vintage" elements in them.

Let's see, there's some hand-ruffled crepe paper, some elements from Making Memories Vintage Findings collection (purchased when I found a ton of it on clearance), and even some retro-looking die cuts from the Handmade and Serendipity collections by K & Company. So there are definitely vintage touches to be found on my pages.

I edited the photos for each of these pages normally- no 70's wash-out here- but added vintage-style frames to each before printing. The frames for both pages came from kits by Kitschy Digitals- I've bought several of Danielle's kits lately (she sells them here and here).

I'm especially drawn to the bright colors in many of the Kitschy Digitals kits, and that love of bright colors and retro elements brought me to another couple of blogs of the same style- Gnome and Birdy and Pugly Pixel. Pugly Pixel, by the way, gives away some amazing free clip-art. The Paper Buffet is my latest favorite.

The whole kitschy-retro-theme (I seem to be picking up modifiers as I go along...) is also reflected in some of my recent scrapping purchases. I have ordered and can't wait to get my hands on two of October Afternoon's latest lines- Thrift Shop and Fly a Kite.

 

 

And Sassafras Lass totally has the colorful retro vibe going on, as well, in their Nerdy Bird and Cherry Delicious lines.

 

It would seem that a little (okay a lot) of the vintage style has crept into my home decorating, as well.

I love almost anything Shabby Chic, as is evidenced by the fact that I love white furniture, and if my furniture isn't white I will almost immediately start scheming of a way to get it painted. (Photo taken from the gallery on the Shabby Chic web site.)

 

Did you notice the white wash of paint behind the photo strips in one of my pages above? Yup, definitely a Shabby touch.

I also love Amy Butler's fabrics (especially her new turquoise and green collections at Bed, Bath, and Beyond), which definitely have a vintage feel to them. I've also got lots of her scrapbook papers...

 

So I guess that makes me a shabby-retro-kitschy sort of vintage scrapper. :)