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Field Study — Vintage Curiosities & Quiet Oddities

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Carved stone scarab paperweight on random cards from an old card catalog.
Vintage library card catalog cards scattered across a warm wood surface with a carved scarab paperweight, small key tag, aged envelope and paper knife, handwritten ledger page, amber-encased scorpion, and an air plant set in a tooth mold.
Closeup of a carved stone scarab paperweight and an Edgar Allen Poe, The Complete Poems, vintage manilla card from an old library card catalog.
Closeup of the head and part of the body of a dried Alligator Fish on vintage cards from an old card catalog.

A collection of vintage curiosities—things made, found, examined, and quietly tucked away.

Beetle in black ink printed one half on a vintage catalog card and the other half on a second vintage card catalog card photographed on slate board.
Reaching hand from a white mannequin in shadow against a stone wall.
Assorted vintage found objects arranged on a dark slate surface, including a carved wooden ornament filigree, shoe last, large military safety pin, tarnished spoon, metal mold fragment, gridded wood block, antique lock plate, ceramic insulator, and a rusted bottle opener.

A menagerie on a work table.

Oddities on work table and wall including a set of judging owls, a wood cog, vintage babies, feathers, stone mortar and pestle, glass jars and vintage elixir bottles, rusty tin of nails, vintage scisors and old yellowed polaroids hanging.
Closeup of ellans vintage brown medicinal bottle, vintage doll faces with piercing eyes, vintage bottles and scissors.
Closeup of a flocked lion head doll with pierecing eyes.
Closeup of two owls a vintage ceramic with a white stone mortar and pestle in front and a hint of a doll upside down with one eye staring in the background.
Half of a white ceramic doll mold of a dolls head with shadow areas for the nose, eyes and ears. The white mold has a gritty texture.

Keepsake Cards

A small study to keep—download the printable here.

Oddities cards - two shown pinned to a wooden typesetting tray with a 'taken in inventory' stamp below. There is a scorpion card and an alligator skull with vines in a cloche. These are hand drawn illustrations in black ink on ivory card stock - two out of a set of three available to download and print.
Star divider used has two hand drawn lines with a star in the center, used as a content break and signals new or different content below. This doodle style illustration is in a medium charcoal gray.

RELATED IDEAS

Closing an old album found at an antique store in Pennsylvania USA. It contains travel photos and postcards collected abroad. The cover is brown and it holds six postcards/photos per inside plastic sleeve pages.
Memories Kept In A Vintage Album
A collection of nine colorful marbles of varying sizes set on top of empty vintage clear bottles.
Nostalgic Keepsakes
Square feature photo of a vintage Halloween vignette with a crow on a vintage typewriter and candleabra with fake wax blood dripping down in the foreground on a black desk. There is a handwritten letter to the side with vintage scissors and a jar with an old quill black feather pen. The tone is spooky and eerie and the photo is sepia.
Vintage-Inspired Halloween Décor

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