Mondo collages! Vintage! Pinterest binging!

I've been making a lot of collages lately.  Sometimes when things are stressful, there's just nothing like going through the image portal, flying with Photoshop elements and collageing as a way to find balance.

I also found that I've been reviewing, organizing and renaming my image collection. I've had special fun with looking through my images from the wonderful Mischief Circus site.  Not only do they have great images, every week their email sends inspiration as well. 

The two main images here are from found images.  The evocative woman in yellow is by Mark Demsteader. and the enigmatic male is Sebastian Horsley, a true character indeed, a London artist who sadly is no longer with us.  I think he'd appreciate the touch of Goth in this collage, which uses black roses from Mischief Circus.

Yellow Gothic collage ~
 acknowledgment to Mark Demsteader & Sebastian Horsley

Mischief Circus uses a lot of vintage images and that sparked me to do a Google search for others. An image really attracted me and took me to Pinterest, which I had to sign up for to view the image. Isn't she delightful?  She was part of a collage sheet that I found on Etsy at Lisa's Altered Art shop

Lisa offers many wonderful images and a whole collection of collage sheets with transparent backgrounds in png format for only $1.00 and up.

Although early vintage has not been quite my style, I've learned that there are many such images available, as most of them are copyright free because of their age.  

Here our Casino Girl is the key element in Vintage Play.

Vintage Play collage

So I had signed up for Pinterest and quickly received an email with other suggestions for images like the first one I saw.  I had heard of it, but had never checked it out.  Basically Pinterest is an free image sharing site, where people can 'pin' images they like to 'boards'.  I find I really like how the images are aggregated.

You can search for specific topics, such as vintage people, and then add other criteria, such as printables or ephemera, etc.  And as you search, Pinterest offers many criteria suggestions.  I have done versions of such searches in Google, but I really have come to like the Pinterest screen view. You are invited to 'pin' and like images and categories you view, but so far I haven't done that.  You can set up 'boards' in general or by topic and you can set up private boards.

People are very generous and there are many 'freebie' images for personal collage or one-off art.  One of my favorite sites is Land of Nod Studios, on Pinterest and at Etsy.

I used this young man from Land of Nod Studio, albeit altered with a zebra head.  The background image in this collage is an amped photo by my friend Perry, of a thrift shop right here in my town.  I love how he included the open car door in the composition.

Thrift Shop - They Have It All & Tacos Too! collage

Searching for  retro images from the 1940's at Pinterest I came across the powerful images of Horst B. Horst, a famous photographer for Vogue magazine.  The woman on the right and the hand with the paper opening to red are from two Vogue 40's  covers.   

Vogue Super Service collage

The bathing beauty with the beach ball was a summer Vogue cover.  The background is a vintage Miami hotel postcard.  The retro woman are from Mischief Circus, with my altered heads.  I've always used alternate heads in my assemblage work, so now they are appearing in the collages.

Vogueing Poolside Collage

Lastly, I got the Pinterest app for my tablet and find its a perfect accompaniment to watching television - searching Pinterest during the commercials.  Now I've come to appreciate that bit of commercial time!  What's even more fun is thinking of new topics and categories.  I may be late coming to the party , but I'm having fun now that I'm here.

And you can Pin this very post at Pinterest yourself!