Mid Century Christmas Wishes

One of my favorite children's book illustrators are the husband-wife team of Martin and Alice Provensen. They also did a wonderful set of screen printed Christmas cards illustrating the 12 Days of Christmas. The cards were done in the 1960's and I've been looking for them to purchase for a number of years. This year, I got (half) lucky. Etsy seller Finds of the Attic had 6 of the cards for sale. Now, to find the rest of the series!

There still some sets from Finds in the Attic available - buy your own here.

Vintage Christmas

Flea Market Sunday

I haven't been to the flea market in awhile but last Sunday I went to the Long Beach Antique Market in Long Beach, California. It takes place on the 3rd Sunday of every month at the Long Beach Veterans Stadium. I brought my camera but was so busy shopping that I forgot to take a lot of photos. Here are a few things that caught my eye.

 A nice Asian ceramic vase...

Glass orbs...

A very cute cat from the 60's or 70's...

Plastic bracelets in bright colors...

A retro blanket in pink and orange...

A lion with lots of character...

Glassware in all colors...

Stacks of vintage suitcases...I wanted them all!

I purchased way more than I planned, and left a few regrets behind. Oh well, there's always next month...

Record Album Covers 2

I found this jazz album on Ebay --I love the bird and the groovy type. It dates from 1963 and the cover art was done by Don Weller. You can see more of his album cover art here.

Flea Market Sunday

Went to the flea market today and found these nifty "Thingie" puzzles. They date from the late sixties and were designed by Sandy Miller for Springbok. I had seen them online before and had been tempted to buy so I was really excited to find not one, but two on the same day! They are only 7" around and the boxes themselves are so cool and retro that I didn't even care if the puzzle was inside. (my husband put them together-one is complete and one is missing pieces). If you're interested in knowing more about the designer and the puzzles, check out this article I found.

The one on the left is called "Town Meeting" and the one on the right is "Lady Celery".

Retro Graphics

I found these vintage language magazines in a local junk shop. They date from 1966 and each magazine features articles in five languages-German, French, English, Spanish, and Italian. I was attracted to the covers with their cool retro graphics.

My Favorite is the cover for August. I have them available for sale in my vintage shop-Two Hand Too

I found this bowl at the flea market but I can't find anything about it. The bowl is really thin white glass and the design is done in black and gold. It looks a lot like pieces by Georges Briard (you can see samples of his work on flickr) but my bowl is unsigned.

Another Flea Market Sunday

I can't believe it's September already. What happened to August? One good thing about starting a new month is that the first Sunday is the flea market at Pasadena City College. Sometimes I find a lot of goodies, and sometimes I don't. Yesterday, I found lots to buy. One item was this cute vintage book. It was originally published in 1960 and is called "Corkey's Friend". It is one in a series by Cecelia and Jean Hinde. Corkey's friend is a mouse named Slim (Corkey never actualy makes an appearance in this book and I'm not entirely sure what kind of animal Corkey is since I haven't seen the other books). In this story, Corkey is sick so Slim rides around town on his stick horse and buys gifts for his sick friend at the candy store, pet store and toy store. I was attracted by the cool palette of olive green, teal blue and melon.

Vintage Sand Pail

This adorable tin sand pail was originally a promo giveaway for Safeguard Soaps-free with a certain amount of soap purchased. It's is sooo cute! It shows children on safari with a lion, elephant and kangaroo. The colors are so bright and the illustrations so retro. The inside and bottom is pale aqua. I believe this dates from the 1960's or early 1970's.