Everyone is familiar with cabinet cards, the stiff standby of so many mixed media artists and source of "instant relatives" that add vintage charm to many a vignette. I find old pictures endlessly fascinating, from the people's clothing, the hairstyles, the photographer's props in the background, and my curiosity about the individuals in the pictures. As if that wasn't enough, I also appreciate the flipside of many of the cabinet cards, because the photography studios of the era often included a fancy background for their advertising.
According to Wikipedia, cabinet cards were first introduced in 1866 and adopted by studios for portraiture until their peak of popularity in the 1880's. By the 1890's there was increasing demand for outdoor and candid photos to include in scrapbooks, and the popularity of the cabinet card declined.
My blogland friend Cathe Holden recently published a post where she used cabinet cards in a unique way. She made a fabric transfer of them and sewed a handy caddy to drape over a chair arm that would hold remotes, reading glasses, and other stuff that needs a place to land. She instructed readers how to produce a transfer of them and I would like to defer to her instructions here .
Using Cathe's post for inspiration, I decided to provide my blog readers with a source of several cabinet card backs for use in collage crafts or fabric transfers. Here are six of my favorites:
For those of you who are interested in more free graphics, try The Graphics Fairy, a website that is dedicated to free vintage images.
