10 Great Free Vintage Clip Art Sites

✯ Day 310 of Vintage 365 ✯

It’s not uncommon for a person’s interests and hobbies to overlap, and in my case one spot where that happens quite often is when it comes to the subjects of vintage images and paper crafting (specifically scrapbooking and card making).
I’m constantly on the prowl for wonderful old school images to use here on Chronically Vintage, as well as for general inspiration, and to save for possible use on future crafting projects.
As result, over time, I've gathered a growing list of online resources that offer an abundance of vintage images - from photographs to illustrations, that hail from many decades and a wide range of (original) sources.
Such images are often immensely beautiful, serving us as well today as when they were first created.
Within Christmas mere weeks away, I know that many of us are in holiday card making overdrive at the moment, so I thought that today would be a great time to share ten of my favourite vintage image sites with you, in case you'd like use some charming old school images on your craft projects (and/or blogs) this Christmas season.

10 Great Free Vintage Clip Art Sites

-Antique Art: To quote this handy site itself, at Antique Clipart you can "browse one of the largest free Public Domain archives of Victorian, and Edwardian era clipart on the Internet! Containing 1044 clipart images of People, Flowers, Animals and more." (Note that the small and medium sizes are free, the largest ones are available for purchase.)

-Averyl's Attic: A lovely selection of illustrated Christmas (and other holiday related) Victorian clipart (that would look marvelous of holiday cards). Please note, this wonderful site was retired in 2015 and now links to a charming blog run by the same person who founded it.

-Carol Anne's Boutique: There is a terrific selection of beautiful vintage images and ephemera to be found here, including scrapbooking favourites like ledger paper, sheet music, and antique postcards.

-Free Vintage Clip Art: Lovely roundup of varied vintage images, from Victorian brides to ornate architectural scrollwork (as well as less common, completely useful images such as coats-of-arms).

-Grandma's Graphics: Features a large array of images, most of which are sourced from vintage books (from the Victorian times onward). A marvelous place to turn for whimsical, classic images that are perfect for everything from greeting cards to children's themed mini albums.

-Imagenes Vintage: A site in both Spanish and English that houses a charming assortment of vintage images, including classic works of art - as well as a selection of great digital scrapbooking elements.

-The Graphics Fairy: One of the best known and most loved online sources of diverse, wonderful antique and vintage images. (A must bookmark site, and terrific resource, for all fans of the past!)

-The Vintage Moth: Crafters rejoice, this site bills itself as offering "free antique and vintage images for mixed media artists" and they certainly deliver on their word.

-Vintage Catnip: Offers a varied assortment of interesting vintage images from sources such as photographs and illustrations, postcards and even woodcuttings.

-Vintage Holiday Crafts: This delightful site features an array of excellent vintage images, the majority of which are (as the site's name implies) holiday themed.

{This elegant illustration of a vintage alarm clock, which comes by way of The Graphics Fairy, is especially fitting for the fact that daylight saving time ends today.}


The majority of sites that offer free vintage images for download do so under the condition that you use the photos, art , and illustrations they offer for personal, not commercial, purposes, but this point varies, so always check with the policies of the site you're interested.

This list, while teaming with ten of my favourite vintage image sites, is no means exhaustive. I'd love to hear about other similar websites that you enjoy turning to for when you're on the prowl for wonderful images from the past.

There's nothing quite like swing music to chase away the wintertime blues

✯ Day 309 of Vintage 365 ✯

November, as we were discussing in Tuesday's post, has many appealing qualities (especially if you prefer winter over summer), but there's no skirting around the fact that for those in the western hemisphere, it is still the start of another very long, very cold season.

From snow banks so high you need to set up base camp before trying to scale them, to the sudden desire to hibernate like a fury brown bear until Easter, there are - I'm the first to admit - more than a few reasons why it can be hard to stay peppy all winter long.

Aside from vibrantly hued garments, marshmallow topped mugs of hot cocoa, and the ingrained merriment of Christmas, one of my favourite ways to shake off the doldrums that the greyest months of the year can cause any of us to feel sometimes, is to play really lively music.

From smooth-as-silk 30s jazz to psychedelic 60s tracks, 80s pop and 50s rock, if the tempo is hopping and the tune is catchy, just about any song is fair game. Few genres of of music however, can so quickly or enthusiastically perk of slopping energy levels than classic jitterbug swing!





Take for example the wonderfully lively number above that I just discovered this week on Youtube. Though the quality of the film itself is a little lacking, the music is intact and couldn't be more delightfully fun!

I searched the ol' interwebs for a while, but couldn't unearth too much about this vintage song, other than the information provided by the person who posted it on Youtube.

From that source, I can tell you that purportedly this great swing dance tune, called Juke Box Joe's, was preformed by Wingy Malone's Mardi Gras Band with Carol Adams, and that the dancers were Lennie and Freda, Gil and Nikki Brady. (By all means if you happen to more about this terrific tune, do let me know in the comment section.)

Though not a long song, Juke Box Joe's is buzzing with the precise kind of acoustic vitality that can do wonders for the mind, body and soul - especially on those bleak and dreary, numbing chilly days that lay ahead of us in the coming months of winter.

My goth meets vintage inspired Halloween costume

✯ Day 308 of Vintage 365 ✯

It's been a long time...a very long time (the better part of two years, if memory serves me right) since I last posted an image of myself here on Chronically Vintage. A point that is, I assure you, in now way intentional.

Instead it stems primarily from the fact that my health has been so poor that, quite honestly, I am rarely well enough to go out and when I do, it's almost always for medical appointments. Though you better believe I sport vintage fashions on those days (and on the ones around the house when I feel well enough to be dressed), exhaustion and stress usually wear heavily on my face, so I'm not too keen on having my picture snapped.

Another element is that, while I adore writing about vintage fashion, CV never set out to be a fashionista's blog in the sense of frequently showing outfits I wear. Nevertheless, again though, it's been too long since I last posted any snaps of myself, so today I'm rectifying that with some images that my sweet husband captured of me around dusk on Halloween night last Monday.

The light had already faded substantially, so we had to up the ISO quite a bit (so hence the grain), but in a way I like how that adds to the aged, delightfully eerie vibe of these All Hallows Eve shots.

Decked all in black, with a darker, more goth take on my favourite vintage make-up look, my outfit intentionally channelled Mortica Addams (we'd just watched the movie Addams Family Values the night before, so that was completely fresh in my mind and seemed like a fun jumping off point for my Halloween night ensemble).

 

A quite night (we only got three trick-or-treaters, but I'm not complaining, as that beat out the past two years when we didn't get any at all) spent at home, watching spooky TV shows and movies while nibbling sweet treats was how we spent our Halloween this year.

(Next year I'd love to get a store bought costume, perhaps of a Victorian or Georgian era style dress, but we'll just have to wait and see how things unfold.)

I'm constantly inspired by the beautiful, creative, timeless looks that so many of you create and share on your own blogs, and while I can't promise overly frequent wardrobe posts here, I will try to not let quite so long go by before I share photos of myself with all of you again (in fact, I've already got a post planned in the near future featuring my lovely new vintage winter coat).