How Do You Organize Ephemera?

by Judy Gula

How Do You Organize Ephemera?

by Judy Gula

Ephemera — do you have enough? Do you do both paper and fabric? How do you organize your finds?

I have been struggling to organize my ephemera in a usable fashion. I have a printer cabinet located in my utility room that contains 20 drawers filled with vintage ephemera … I rarely dive through its contents. I have 3 IKEA bins overflowing that I have been tryingto put into 12x12” clear folders, and sleeves.

If you have any suggestions on how to store ephemera in a user-friendly way, please leave a comment below. In return, your name will be entered into a drawing for a special ephemera package from my studio.

Why all this talk of usable storage? The goal was to clean off my studio work table of all the glue and paint, in order to have the space to use for fabric. I have been trying to catch up on creating journal pages for our round robin and I have been on a card making kick.

Woven paper and ephemera greeting cards created by Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts

So to finish up this project, did I dig deep and pull out any of my stored ephemera? Nope! What I find myself really using are pint-size plastic bags that contain everything I have scraped off my table! Any scrap goes into a bag, because for sure I can’t toss it in the garbage... it might be usable!

Woven paper and ephemera greeting cards created by Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts

In a previous blog posting, I wrote about how I created these cards. I still had more woven paper strips and wanted/felt I had to use them, so I went back and selected some additional vintage portraits to use.

Woven paper and ephemera greeting cards created by Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts

Last year in December I created mixed media collage cards (view post) using bright paints and vintage/retro sewing pattern illustrations, and I’ve made more in this style too.

Monoprints/vintage sewing pattern collaged cards by Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts

The backgrounds of the sewing pattern cards were printed on my 5" x 7" Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate, and stamped using the great full page sized stamps by The Backporch Artessa (Kari McKnight Holbrook).

Monoprints/vintage sewing pattern collaged cards by Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts

Since our weather forecast for Christmas Eve is temperatures breaking a record and reaching the high 70s, maybe these are actually seasonal after all!

Wishing you the same sentiments as one of the vintage ephemera downloads offered in our most recent enewsletter: a holiday season filled with prosperity, health and happiness!

Please leave me a comment about your ephemera stash, your organization tips, etc. You might be the lucky winner of a package from my studio to add to your collection!

Collaged greeting cards by Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts

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