Share Your Story: Erin's Art Part II

We are back, for part two of Erin's amazing art collection. 

One thing that really caught my eye when Erin shared her Pinterest link with me back in the day was the originality of her collection. Yes, she has an amazing eye for finding amazing painting at the thrift store. She also susses out more original items to hang on her walls. 

I love it! I think it's very easy to get hung up in the "important painting" idea when we are decorating rooms. Here are some other original ideas for inexpensive (but fabulous!) wall decorations. Some of these ideas are especially good for filling out gallery walls.

Erin: Two framed pages from a vintage 1940s children's book. The illustrations are by Pelagie Doane. This is hanging in my daughter's room.

Erin: I found a 1970s typography book at St. Vinny's for one dollar and framed the pages in matching frames from Walmart. I painted the mats turquoise to match all the turquoise in my house! These look great in the hallway.

Erin: Prints of 4 Ladies' Home Journal covers from the turn of the century. I have sort of an Edwardian theme in the guest bathroom (I guess inspired by Downton Abbey, ha ha.)

Erin: Vintage license plate. This is a fun way to spruce up an area, and you can usually get vintage plates for not too much money.

I love this idea! Prior to the seventies/eighties most states issued a new metal plate every year, so it might be possible to find years meaningful to you. I'd like to find a vintage license plate from every state we visit together and hang them in the hallway. Be very cool to add on to them from time to time!

Erin: I bought 6 vintage postcards from places that were meaningful to me and my husband (where he was born, where I was born, where we met, where we live, etc.) I framed them & hung them together to create this piece.

Yeah...I'm stealing this idea.

 Erin: A hand-painted peacock cutting board. This was painted by a local Norwegian man. Is it creepy that I Googled him after I bought it? :-)

I always pull out my Nancy Drew skills after I buy something with a name on it.

Classic vintage silhouettes. I think these were probably mass produced in the mid-twentieth century.

Erin: Vintage rolling pin and a similar toy one hanging on the soffit in my kitchen. I thought they looked sweet together.

So that's a portion of Erin's amazing art collection. Do you have something you'd like to share? Email me!

What about you guys? What non-traditional things do you have hanging in your house?

Share Your Story: Erin's Art

Meet Erin.

Erin was one of Middle Class Modern's first regular readers, and when she linked up her Pinterest board devoted to the art in her house, I knew I had found a like-minded soul!

So it's super appropriate that Erin's art collection is the first entry in a new feature here at MCM, "Share Your Story." Have you finished a cool craft, own an awesome collection, or are super proud of a room makeover? Email me at middleclassmodern@gmail.com and tell me about. I want to share your story!

Here's what Erin has to say about her oh-so-amazing and oh-so-affordable art collection:

Hi, Tracie! I'm so glad I found your blog! I've been a lover of all things vintage since I was a teen. Both my parents are antiques dealers so I suppose that's where I get it. Vintage art just seems to have SOUL. Most of mine come from thrift stores and Craigslist because I love a bargain! I don't have any rules about what I buy; if I like it, I buy it. Part of the fun, to me, is layering different time periods and styles. (I LOVE that eclectic gallery walls are so popular right now!!) Somehow, even though all my artwork is very different, it makes sense when it's placed together under one roof. And everywhere I turn, I get to see something that makes me smile. Anyway, hope you enjoy the pictures!  --Erin

Something I think you might all enjoy is how Erin layers vintage and eclectic art into a more traditional home. She also plays with the definition of "art" with charming results. (I've organized her collection into loose themes.) Erin's collection is cool and amazing I'm actually splitting it into two parts-come back next week for the rest of it!

Transportation Art

I love trolleys, and this soft little drawing of a trolley car is just adorable.

This mini-gallery wall of antique car art is fantastic.

I love this one! 

Erin: It's a print of a painting by maritime artist Frank Vining Smith. I love the soft blues.

Me too!

Vintage Portraits

I love this painting of the (Regency?) little girl in a red and cream dress holding a kitten. It's kind of Gainsborough-ish (is it a Gainsborough?).

 This painting of the Victorian woman in a red dress playing the piano is "Sonata" by M. Ditlef. There's an entire series of these paintings. Go ahead and anticipate that post, alright?

Also? I used to own this painting (different frame!). I love that Erin found it recently at a thrift store. For $10. When I've looked on etsy (I'd like to replace my copy) the going price? About $200. #IWantToShopWhereSheShops

Erin: In addition to vintage art, I also love to collect ephemera. (Scrapbooks, journals, etc.) This drawing came from a book full of old schoolwork and artwork by a boy who was in eighth grade in 1910. I had to frame it because it was too cute. Sailor suits were very popular for young people at the turn of the century. 

Amazing Needlepoint

WOW. This is a big, massive needlepoint scene of a steeple against mountains. Done by HAND. Someone worked really, really hard on this. I love landscape orientated pieces like this!

Erin: This vintage needlepoint picture is huge! It just have taken months to complete. It's such an unusual size and I love the colors.

Or, you know, what Erin said.

All right, so here's the partial tour of Erin's art collection. Come back next week for the rest...and in the meantime, remember to share your story!

Big Eyed Lovelies

This post requires you to know one thing about my childhood; I was gifted with two amazing sets of grandparents. Both sets influence this post. However, don't blame my dubious taste in art on them. That's all on me.

Remember how I posted that J bought me these paintings when we were in South Carolina while I was pregnant, but then I thought they were lost when we moved in here, and then J found the box? Yeah.

Photo From My Girl Thursday

And then I was flittering around Pinterest one night and saw this gallery wall, which stars my bongo drum boy?

Well, after I wrote the post I went and studied my paintings. Somehow I never noticed both were signed...with different signatures. The ballerina girl was signed MAIO, and bongo boy is signed Medeiros. The Medeiros name is interesting, but the MAIO really caught my eye.

Because I could see another painting when I looked at it. When I was eleven or so, my family, including my paternal grandparents, road-tripped to Rome, Georgia. I have absolutely no idea why. Anyway, my grandfather and I were in an antique store when I fell in love with a painting of a girl with light brown hair in a Patty Duke flip standing on a green hill, wearing what I considered a "Robin Hood" (the Errol Flynn version) outfit and wearing a quite fetch hat.

He bought it for me.

For the rest of my childhood it hung in my room. It was lost during a move. 

I realized the same artist painted my ballerina girl that painted my lost childhood painting. 

I did what any obsessive person does in 2013. I hit up google.

Image from eBay

The hairstyle is identical to the one remember, but my girl had darker hair and a different color outfit. Also, no poodle. Still, I quite like this Maio painting.

Image from eBay

Another one from MAIO's harlequin series. Another blonde girl, with a goat instead of a poodle.

Image from eBay

Very, very close to my girl, but mine was wearing her hat.

Image from eBay

My ballerina has a sister. I love the face on the blue ballerina the best, but I'm still coveting the red ballerina.

Image from eBay

Two more from the Harlequin series, a girl leaning against a wall with a parrot (!) and another playing a lute. I LOVE the haughty expression on Parrot Girl.

So during my research I quickly learned MAIO was considered a "big eyed painter".  I had no idea. Now, my parents started dragging me to antiques fair as soon as I could walk and I started frequenting thrift stores as soon as I had transportation, so I certainly know ABOUT big eyed paintings. I just never considered MAIO a big eyed painter! I tend to think of images like these:

Image From Keane Eyes Gallery

Lots of people enjoy Margaret Keane's big eyed paintings. I'm not one of them. I think there's enough sadness in the world without those demented children and their poor pets staring at me everyday.

Quickly I learned "big eyed" covered a much broader field than I was aware of. Both Medeiros and MAIO were considered "big eyed" painters.

Remember my excitement over the fact both of my paintings had W.T. Grants written on the back of them? That's because oil on board big eyed paintings were usually sold at "five and dime" variety stores like Grants, Woolworths (!), and other now-defunct chains.

Y'all, I am straight up obsessed with Woolworths (this is due to my maternal grandmother. We ate lunch at Woolworths at least twice a week during the summers when I was little) and love finding old dime store merchandise.

I feel an obsession coming on.

Image from Medeiros Online

Here's the Medeiros bongo boy with the dark haired harlequin MAIO girl, in matching frames. Just like my ballerina girl and bongo boy are in matching frames! I can't find a grown-up/teen boy by MAIO so I think the bongo boy was packaged with the MAIO girls for a his and her set.

By the way, MAIO did a whole set of big eyed kid paintings I find kind of creepy, but I love her adult/teen set of paintings. I haven't yet found the one I had as a kid. However, there are TONS of variations on the the harlequin theme that I've found, so I have faith I'll find it eventually.

(And if anyone sees it in the wild, well, you know where to find me!)

I've also determined that I already own another big eyed painting.

Mr. Owl!

Anyway, does anyone else have a strange little art obsession?

Hanging A Gallery Wall: Part One

Yep, I'm back with a gallery wall update.

Here's our nice, long wall in the living room.

Blankety blank blank blank. Also, I notice I never replaced the outlet cover after I painted.

In May. Of 2012. My bad. I'll get on that.

My paint job, by the way, is not the streaky mess it appears in this picture. We get weird natural light in this room because the living room window is under a deep porch roof. I need to take a picture in the morning, because the light is beautiful then. And all my lamplight is over on that side of the room, adding to the weird shadow-palooza.

Anyhow.

This is how far I got.

The lake country lithograph isn't working for me there. Good to know. Painting the frame blue was a huge mistake since the picture is already so intensely blue. I see a date with spraypaint in the frame's future.

So my "process" was I found the exact middle of the wall and hung slightly above that point. The mirror is also functional, so having it around face level is nice.

The bottom edge of Van Gogh Sailing Boats Les Saintes Maries painting hits at the halfway point of the mirror. The top edge of my embroidered quote in the vintage frame hits in the middle at the other side. Then I started filling in.

So I was busy hanging a vintage tray under the "Home Is Wherever We Are Together" piece when...I thoroughly, thoroughly messed up.

See...I'm still not over this stupid flu/whatever, and so I was hurrying through this so I could collapse on the sofa. Instead of taking down all the pictures when I put the hanger up for the next one I just left them in place.

This was fine, except there's a stud running down the lake district/quote/tray vertical line. So it requires some forceful hammering, which I'm providing when the quote falls on my hand and the lake district falls on my head.

As it turns out, head wounds DO bleed profusely! Yep, a bloody head and a busted knuckle.

J patched me up and sent me to bed, ordering me to "leave the d*mn wall alone until you feel better."

Hmph.

ANYWAY. I made a gif! Watch the salon wall, at roughly it's halfway point, come together!

(It's kind of hypnotic!)

Making A Gallery Wall: Planning

I'm officially obsessed with salon walls. Way back on this art tour post I mentioned wanting to create a fantastic mix-matched gallery wall in our living room.

Here are some examples I think are particularly drool worthy.

Picture From Pinterest, Someone Please Tell Me Where It's Really From

 Love...everything, really. I think this pic was originally from Domino, maybe?

Picture From The Thompson Family

 Love the mix of vintage art and crewel work.

Photo From Design Sponge

My first step was gathering together all the "art" I wanted to use on the wall. Here were the winners.

These bits and pieces are just hung up on the nails from my original, very sad attempt at making a collage wall. These pieces include some lithographs on the English Lake district, the anchor I made for J, the Paul Deltlefsen prints I bought at two different thrift stores on the same day, and the amazing Vincent Van Gogh I shared on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. It still has the original, 1950s era Macy's price tag. $13.50. Yep. Love the frame.

More pieces destined for our salon wall. The embroidered quote I made way back in the day, a vintage souvenir Pike's Peak tray (somewhere J and I both visited and loved before we ever met each other), a super vintage sailboat tray, a needlework cover of the Saturday Evening Post, a Richard Nixon album, and some other artworks.

I don't think I've ever showed these two on the blog before. We actually bought these on our honeymoon. Love. Them. They have Kresge stamped on the back of them, meaning they are probably from the now defunct dime store. That makes them even more awesome.

Now, the problem with my lovingly thrift scored frames and art work is they often need a little work. None of the pieces here had workable framing hardware.

For example, this vintage piece apparently produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was a weird twine thing going on, but no real way to hang it.

So I fixed it. A hot glue gun, and some framing hooks. Glue the hook onto the back of any piece of art (this also works great on trays or other less traditional pieces you'd like to hang). Let it dry. And...that's it.

On other pieces, like the framed quote, the original wire used to hang it had stretched and framed with time. The easiest fix is to snip out the original wire and replace it. All hardware stores carry frame wire. Super easy.

So tomorrow I'll be back (maybe with a video!) about laying out and hanging my salon wall. Super exciting! I've only wanted to do this FOREVER.

The "Art" In Our "House"

The title comes from J, who laughs whenever I bring up our "art" collection. Hmph. We have some classics! As soon as I thought about writing this post, I realized 75% of the "art" in our house has a theme. Taking the pictures, I realized we actually have two themes...and each piece falls into at least one of them. Haha. Well, at least we're consistent.  So here's a quick art tour through our house.

This piece hangs in our foyer. It was my birthday present from J this year. From the thrift store, natch. Screenprinted zebras and a crazy sun on canvas? Yes, please! It's so seventies. I love it. It's signed E. Taylor, but I haven't been able to find any information about E. Taylor. Unless Elizabeth Taylor made it. In which case, OMG.

I freaking love this piece so much. I used to have a collection of vintage seascapes, and I'd really like another one. I found this on the floor at a local thrift store. There was no price on it. This never bodes well at a thrift store. I nonchalantly strolled up to the cashier, hoping A. she wouldn't notice the lack of a price tag and B. it would be cheap. Yeah, it didn't work. She told me the managers only price once a week, so I could come back FIVE DAYS LATER. I actually couldn't make it back that day, and when I did go back, I was doing my best Eeyore impersonation. I just knew it would be either gone or waaaaay over priced.

It was there, it was priced at $5, and it had a green tag. It was green tag 50% off day. Eeyore went away, and HAPPY DANCY TRACIE took over.

The signature reads Harland Young, an artist apparently best known for his western paintings. He even did an authorized painting of John Wayne! This is definitely not an original, but it looks amazing over the dining room table. 

These two prints are part of a series, and I bought them months apart at two different thrift stores. The framed one cost $.50 and the unframed print cost $.80. They are so bright and happy (not words I usually use to describe things I like). I can't wait to find a frame for the bottom one, so I can unite them on a wall. The back of both says they were issued by Winde Fine Prints, which I haven't been able to find a LOT of information about, but they apparently were a prolific issuer of art in the mid-century, going by ebay. The bottom print is by Paul Detlefsen, who produced an insane amount of happy commercial art in the 1950s and 60s.

 

Two pictures that currently live in our bathroom. The happy horse pictures is...insane, really. The owl picture scares J (don't tell him I told you so). The owl is probably going to find a new home in the hallway. I'm seriously considering do a little embroidery directly on the art, maybe out-lining the owl or stitching the leaves. That's the awesome thing about paying $.85. You feel like you can experiment!

The sad beginnings of a salon wall. The bottom two pictures are from a 1961 book of engravings of the English Lake District ($.50, people!). I love them so much, and really need to get more frames so I can hang more of them up. This is where the "Home Is" embroidery lept off the wall yesterday, so it looks even barer than usual. On top is a simple anchor I embroidered for J's Valentine's Day present.

So, there's our "art" collection. Every piece is from a thrift store. We are super high class like that. Did you figure out the two themes?

The first is animals, which I already knew. Horses predominate (three pieces!), but we also have zebra, duck, and owl art. 

The other theme, which I realized as I took the pictures, is water. Many of our pictures have a nautical theme (Navy anchor, Lake District, horse running through the waves, windmill). 

The TL:DR on this post isn't that you should run out and buy a lot of vintage art. (Please don't do that! I would leave less for me!) The point is that art doesn't have to be expensive. Thrift stores are FULL of art ranging from vintage paint by numbers (which I'm OBSESSED with) to Thomas Kinkade and everything in between. Thrift stores are also FULL of frames, ranging from simple wooden frames to ornate plaster and gilt numbers. So get out there and look! 

And even though I tease about J, he really likes most of the "art" in our "house."He really loves the nautical prints, and loves the zebras because I love Rose and Dorothy so much. It's a compromise. But I do love our little collection, and can't wait to get more frames/add to it in other budget friendly ways. (There's also DIY art, but that's another conversation!)

Does anyone else have a collection of budget friendly art?