My Vintage Cardstock

I have a real love of the old ledger books with writing, accounting or whatever in them.  The darker the pages are, the better it is as far as I am concerned.    The only drawback to them is that they are pretty fragile to use for certain applications so I combined them with some manila folders I had picked up at the thrift store, of course, and glued them together with Collage Pauge to make my own vintage cardstock.    The Collage Pauge is by Traci Bautista and you can get it at Joann's or online.  I love working with this stuff.....a very nice and economical gel medium.   I might also add here that, depending on what you want to use it for, you can use a lot of things for a substrate to adhere the old papers to.   I had a bunch of 12 x 12 papers that I really didn't like anymore so I used them up.   Also, it works well to adhere the old papers to Tim Holtz's grungeboard and grungepaper.  If you are working with old fragile paper, be sure and apply the Collage Pauge on the manila folder or any other substrate you might be using  and then lay the paper onto it.   After I applied the medium on the substrate, I initally hand press everything down and then brayered it in all directions.   I dry it out in the open first (would you believe I laid it on top of one of the classic cars....shhhh.....don't tell him I did that) and then I let them sit under my heavy old books for a couple days.   That way you have a nice flat piece of vintage cardstock.    I know you can buy cardstock that resembles all of this but I love having the satisfaction of doing it myself and having the real thing for projects, etc.

The ledger papers with the accounting and writing on them are from 1880's ledger books.   I think the Long Island Express ledger book is from the early 1900's.   The newpaper clippings are from some 1917 newspapers I found at a thrift store.   The Sears, Roebuck catalog is a 1930's and was in pretty rough shape but perfect for me as I love the "aged" look and feel of the old books and catalogs.   

The following are some pictures of the books, newspapers and catalogs I worked from.   I did not take a picture of the 1880's ledger books again as I already posted them on my blog sometime ago.

The following pictures are pages from the above books that are  glued on the manila folders.   Some have already been trimmed and some aren't trimmed yet.   Once they are thoroughly dried and pressed for a few days, I trim some of them  up so they are ready for future projects and leave some as they are as they make great pages for my Remains of the Day journals.   Once the fragile papers are glued onto other substrate, they are sturdy enough to fold, etc.

 

This is time consuming but very addictive and worthwhile if you like having the real thing in your projects.       I will be doing a future post as to what I used some of  these papers for.