This Vintage Owl Book Plate - A Gift for You - Limited Time

It is a week till my birthday and for a birthday treat I wanted to give you a present.

I've had this wise old owl vintage book plate for a few years and I decided to share it with everyone. This book plate is from about 1925, I would guess.

I created a hi-res pdf so you can download it, print it up (on adhesive paper would be best) and then place in the books you treasure so much.

Did you know Ex Libris means "from the library of" and that book plates bearing that phrase have been used for hundreds of years?

In honor of me making it to another year, you can get this bookplate download for almost free. I say almost, because Etsy wouldn't allow me to mark it completely down. So you can get the download for 50 cents through November 6th. Use the code owlbday.

I hope you enjoy them.  Print up a bunch and give them as a gift or put them in those books you always end up loaning out.  Such a clever little owl.

Vintage Color Palettes - Birthday Greetings

This lovely Vintage Color Palette comes from a birthday greeting postcard that was sent to a young boy from his "Gramma". Most likely it was sent in the 1920's. 

The colors in this palette are some of my favorites. I love the rich, muted colors.  From left to right, the hex codes are: 978778, 606887, b16241, 758060

Vintage Color Palettes - Witch Tree & Ramona's Wedding Place

Two Vintage Color Palettes today because sometimes it's too hard to chose just one. I went through some postcards I hadn't been through in a long time yesterday and found these beauties.

This one above is a gorgeous "Phostint" postcard from the early 1900's. It is of the Witch Tree in Monterey. A lone cypress that was full of history and mystery. From what I can tell it was destroyed in a storm in 1964. At one time it was considered the most photographed tree in the U.S.

I love the unique colors of the palette for this postcard. Rich antique versions of modern colors. I especially love that dark cypress gray/green that is almost black. That's a color you don't see much these days.

The hex color codes are from top to bottom: 7e5154, fcbbbb, 6eadb5, 595f5e.



The next color palette is from a linen postcard from around 1940. The postcard is of Ramona's Marriage Place in San Diego. It's one of the oldest surviving examples of Spanish architecture and still stands.

The color palette of this postcard is filled with sunlight and summer shadows - a pretty vintage southwest color combo.

Hex color codes are from left to right: fad5a8, e47e62, 9183ab, a6b96b

See all Vintage Color Palettes on Pinterest.

Vintage Color Palette - Yamato Bros. Co.

This is a beautiful vintage color combination from this unique piece of advertising scrap. The company who distributed these was Yamato Bros. Co, in Kobe, Japan. I am guessing this is from around 1910.  Can you read Japanese?  I'd love to know what it says.

The hex codes for these colors is from top to bottom: f8b4c3, a7b15f, ce3041, 296e8f.

All the Zines you Could Want in One Room - The Portland Zine Symposium 2015!

It's that time again! The Portland Zine Symposium is this weekend and I will be there. Need convincing:

Top Ten Reasons you should go to the Portland Zine Symposium:

1. It's free
2. It's air-conditioned
3. There are free workshops where you can learn stuff
4. There are thousands of zines there for you to browse
5. Because you've never known for sure what this whole zine thing is about
6. There are lots of comic artists there, too.
7. You will have some great conversations
8. You'll probably end up with some free stuff
9. You'll get to see me
10. You can see my new zine!

Hope to see you there! I will be near the far front door.

Vintage Color Palette - Souvenir from Moro, OR

This vintage color palette is from a postcard that was sent from a small town in Central Northern Oregon in 1909. Written on the back it just says "Well, did you get this?"  It was sent to The Dalles, OR.

It's a lovely and unique postcard with an interesting combination of hues. The hex color are from top to bottom: f6bbba, f4454f, fdde53, 759552.

If you like a vintage palette you can use it to make patterns and backgrounds or use it as the basis for decorating or web design. Just for fun I quickly made a background on Colourlovers from a pattern someone else designed. Here it is as a background for this image:

Follow Vintage Color Palettes on Pinterest.

How I Got Into Zines

I ran across a zine today called "Entry Point" that was put out in 2009. It was a comp zine where different zine makers wrote about how they got into zines.  It was neat to see the page I contributed again and I thought I would share it, now, 6 years later! Wow, can't believe it's been that long.

Vintage Color Palette - Charleston Garden & The Sherman Chicago

These two Vintage Color Palettes are perfect for showing off the unique colors used in vintage mid-century advertising illustrations. This is total Mad Men territory.  

The above VCP is from a postcard for Altman's Charleston Garden on 5th Avenue in New York. This was the restaurant in B Altman & Co - a department store at the time. It seems to still be there as an event space. This restaurant was on the fifth floor of the building! Oh, I wish I could have seen it. 

This postcard was sent in August 1956 to Laguna Beach, CA from Flushing, NY. 

The hex codes for this palette are from left to right: 287e68, 2e7a9a, 994c59, 70b4a4.

This illustrated advertising color palette is from a postcard for The Sherman Hotel in Chicago. 

This color palette is so sophisticated mid-century. I love the colors and could totally imagine a living room or office lobby done in these colors. This postcard has no message on the back.

The hex colors for this palette are from top to bottom: d07828, aa4b0d, 76949a, d8cea8.

Not sure what these Vintage Color Palettes are about? You can use these color palettes for inspiration in decorating, painting and design. The hex colors are provided so you can use these color palettes in web and graphic designs. Follow this link to learn more about using Vintage Color Palettes.

Follow Vintage Color Palettes on Pinterest.

Between Holidays - French Toast Muffins with Clementine Maple Icing

I always really like the week between Christmas and New Years. Don't you?  I love the way things slow down and everyone's okay with it. The Christmas lights and decorations are still up, but the grand hoo-ha is mostly over.  A new fresh year is on the horizon with lots of plans, but not quite here yet, so just relax and wait till it arrives. It's a good week.

On Christmas day I made a late brunch for the mister and me.  At the last minute I had a brainstorm to make a new dish that I kind of made up right then.  It turned out great and I wanted to share it with you.

I'm calling them French Toast Muffins, but they might be more of a Bread Pudding. I don't really know. Basically I took some of the delicious gluten-free Challah Rolls that I got at the local Gluten Free Bakery here in town called New Cascadia Traditional. In case you don't know, Challah bread is a traditional Jewish egg bread. I've always wanted to make great french toast with it, but I didn't think I could because they only had the rolls. But, this recipe made it work.

So, back to the recipe. I took the rolls and broke them up in pieces and put them in the muffin tin (previously sprayed with Coconut Oil). Then I beat a few eggs with some half and half, vanilla, cinnamon and a little maple sugar (the granulated kind, I got mine here). I poured this mixture over the bread, sometimes smashing the bread a bit so it absorbed it all.  I then baked for about 30 minutes on 350°. See, how scientific I am? It's all abouts and kind-ofs. But, what do you expect for a last minute made-up recipe.

Then - and this is the best part - I juiced 2 clementines and mixed the juice up with a lot of powdered sugar and a smidge and a splash of more granulated maple sugar until it looked like I wanted it to look.  Once the muffins were cooled down a bit I drizzled it all over.  You could also skip the icing and just put syrup over them.

These were delicious hot or cold, They were great that day and just as good two days later. The icing even seemed to get a stronger taste of clementine as it got older and thickened. Having only juice and sugar in them, I just left the icing out. These were super easy and there are so many variations you could do. They'd be great for a potluck or picnic breakfast. 

I hope you enjoy this quiet week and have a great New Year. Thanks for keeping up with me.

Vintage Color Palettes - Xmas Greetings and A Happy New Year

Here are two Vintage Color Palettes that also wish you a Happy Christmas Season and a very Merry New Year. These are unique colors for Winter Holiday postcards, don't you think? I really like the combo of both of these postcards. Both are from the 1910's. 

The Xmas postcard's hex number colors are from right to left: d1db67, b1d1c6, fb878a, 658a28.

The New Years hex number colors are from top to bottom: b7b156, 9d6d48, ebcec6, b4a6ad.

Not sure what you can do with these color palettes? See this blog post about Using Vintage Color Palettes by Ponyboy Press.

Thank you for following Ponyboy Press over the years. I hope you all have wonderful holidays and a terrific 2015!