Vintage Ladybird Book Covers used as Kitchen Border

Sometimes kitsch lives in nostalgia. Old design & branding bringing back warm, familiar feelings & a "things were better in our day" mood.

Ladybird books have spotted this market & now sell a range of cake tins, memo-boards & mugs adorned with the Learn to Read covers from the 70s & 80s.

If like me you learnt your words with the help of Peter & Jane and Kathy & Mark, not to forget Socks the dog, then just seeing some of these illustrations will bring memories flooding back.

Ladybird Vintage Prints online also provide a service to order any of the pages from their hundreds of informational books as glorious, full colour prints.

I chose a cheap option & printed out little versions of some of the illustrations I liked best.
Now in plain, dirt-cheap ikea frames, I think they look quite nice along the back of the kitchen counter.

Claire

Tattoo Roulette CSAimages.com

Something a bit different today, one of my favourite websites with pant-wettingly perfect kitsch images.

CSAimages.com calls itself a brainstorming tool & also sells stock photos for commercial & private use.
There are photographs & illustrations but all have a real retro, eames era, modernist, tongue-in-cheek twist.

The reason why the title of this post is "tattoo roulette" is because I reckon I could safely say any random print stock image off the site, would make a cool tattoo. I think the number of pictures I adore on the site could cover my whole body in tattoos!

My husband has bought me two of their books, published under the name Pop Ink, for gifts over the years.

Claire

Mabel Lucie Atwell Prints 1960's

I bought these in a charity shop in a fit of displaced nostalgia. My mum used to tell me about reading Mabel Lucie Atwell books as a child, so when I found these original prints of her, I had to buy them.
They are currently not up on show, but I'm still holding on to them.

Claire

Ugly Kitsch Art In Situ

I've now blogged on each of these prints seperately, but in doing so have excluded you from the wonder that is so much bad taste condensed in one room's wall space.

We moved house this year & in our old flat I had every single picture on one wall in the kitchen. It was hideous & majestic. On moving to our house I've felt perhaps they look a little lost spead out on the bigger walls.

The wall in the dining room with the five Dallas Simpson, sad gypsy children I think works well. But the poodle-Jesus combo doesn't look quite right.

A friend pointed out an article on Fortean Times this week about this style of art & hauntings of homes. I'm not supersticious, but I still didn't delve any further into the urban legends for fear of spooking myself. I've over half a dozen of them!

Claire

Flamenco Dancing Mister

This fella is so tall he won't fit inside the cabinet with his other half.

See my previous post about my lady Flamenco dancer a few weeks back for a spiel on these beauts!

Claire

Retro Wind-up Tin Robot

Another one of my husband's great present choices, a reproduction tin robot.
Not only kitsch, but apt for me as I have a love/hate relationship with our metal friends. They are in my top 3 phobias, but tell me a movie stars androids & I'll be renting it that night.

Claire

Arabian Fella Bosson Wall Plaque

Ahhhh the Bosson Wall-Faces. The most terrifying of all your granny or aunty's ornaments.

My Gran had a sailor that I remember being periodically spooked by, but I know she had some others I cannot recall.

These go for, on average, £15-£20 on eBay, which again is a bit above my usual kitsch purchase price. I managed to get this Arabian Man for 20p at a car boot sale though.

I would love to create a creepy corner of the room with a dozen of these characters peering down at us.

Claire

I'm not the only Crazy in the Household

Proof I'm not the only one in this marriage who collects old things, here is a small part of my husband's Star Wars collection.
He collects the original 1970s-1980s toys, this bit I like because of it's shop display style backer.

I shouldn't complain about his love of Star Wars. I love it myself & can hold my own at Star Wars Trivial Pursuit against him; plus it makes buying Christmas presents for him easy, anything with Boba Fett on it!

Claire