Vintage Shooting Target Papers

Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.
Les Brown

Thrifted finds

A good flea market find always makes me happy. If it’s a paper find, like a roll of vintage wall paper with a pretty pattern, or a pile of old letters, I’m even happier. That’s because paper finds are so incredible rare here in Sweden. You can find lots of second hand embroidered table cloths and porcelain, but almost never do I see the kind of papers I love to use in my collages. I’m not sure why that is, but old papers just rarely end up being for sale here. So imagine my happiness when I found the pile above…

It’s a huge pile of vintage papers for target practice – and they’re square (my favorite format for collages). I’m not really gonna start shooting on them, even though I gave a bunch to my brother for him and his friends to shot-gun play. Instead I thought about using them as substrates for collage as soon as I saw them, or even painting on and leaving some of the black print to peek through…

Let's shoot 'em

I haven’t tried working on one yet, but I think it will be lots of fun to experiment with this pile of papers. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

What do you think? What would you use them for?


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10 Responses

  1. What a cool find!
    I’ll be going to thrift shops, yard sales and flea markets during summer so if there’s something in particular you would like to see (and trade for), let me know.

    Sophie

  2. Hi Hanna,
    these cards are great! you could stitch a whole series of them together and make an accordian book…or some kind of book…
    also perfect for collages. I would machine sew and/or embroider right on them. you can do gel medium image transfers too. The possibilites go on and on.
    also, you could collage and quilt them together to make a large montage.
    Keep us posted!

  3. Love those squared circles, Hanna. Your aim was true when you found them!
    I can see a collection of dots in matching square frames hanging on a pink wall.

  4. You could send them to your fans!!! Ha ha. Seriously, these are very cool. Enough of a design to be interesting, but not so busy that they’d overwhelm other images. The big targets will make a great background.

  5. These are a super cool find! I know about not finding things at flea markets- where I live its hard to find paper items too. But when you do…you walk away grinning from ear to ear. I bet you are still grinning about these.

  6. Hi Hanna, what a great find! I thought you’d enjoy this blog – she’s a great collage artist, and has a whole series of works with these papers! She also had many, and sent them out to many artists to see what they would come up with!

  7. I will continue to create every day, no matter how small each daily piece is, I feel rusty if I don’t do something daily. I’d be creating faces in your large black circles, haha! I love to doodle faves! ❤️

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