Last Saturday I went ephemera hunting at an antique mall. Not something I do regularly. Or even occasionally. Actually it was the first time I did it.

The antique mall I went to was pretty decent and had a good bit of vendor stands. And one of them was dedicated to ephemera for art journaling. Total score!!!! I probably spent 30 minutes just looking through all the pictures and post cards and stuff looking for those few bits that inspired me.

First I found an antique tarot deck in French. It was so cool and it was definitely going home with me. But not for art. That one went into my spiritual collection.

Then I found some foreign currencies and a couple advertisements that were pretty cool. So they went into my pile too.

Then I found a deck of plastic playing cards in a plastic case and I thought maybe those would be good for altering.

Then I found a deck of playing cards from Zehnder’s restaurant. Cute little touristy deck they probably gave away at some point. There were silly baby face pictures on the face of the cards and I thought….ohh those will make cute journal inserts. So in the pile they went.

The baby cards came out to be looked at last night and I realized they all had card playing sayings with three of them including the word trump. Oh insipiration….I could poke fun at our current political climate with those…now I have an idea.

This morning I pulled those cards out again and decided to look up Zehnder’s restaurant just to see if it was still in business by chance. And it was!!! Matter of fact they have been in business selling chicken dinners for 160 years! And their history page was full of information about their experiences through the years. Especially around prohibition. It was so cool to see. I was actually pleasantly surprised. And now I have a reason to go to Michigan.

With all that cool history I decided to contact them and see if I could find out how old the cards were, when they gave them out, and ultimately if they might be interested in a bit of their history back. Lo and behold the owner responded within an hour and a couple hours later we settled on a price that recoups my cost and covers shipping and the cards will be going home in July. I’ll miss those silly little baby faces but I think this story is better. What a story these cards could tell if they could talk.