Teeny Tiny Press by Amanda Laughtland

This is my favorite "group photo" I've taken so far of some Fisher Price toys. We are looking into doing some resale of vintage toys and possibly making and selling some vintage-inspired items. At first I was biased and only liked the Fisher Price I remembered from the 1970s and 1980s, but now I have to say I like some of the newer Little People stuff, too. I mean, how cute are these farm animals? The trouble with even thinking about selling toys is that even when they aren't "yours" from your childhood, it is still hard to part with something so cute.

Well, maybe not "real" men, but the coolest Fisher Price men... Am I having too much fun photographing some of the vintage toys we've picked up at the thrift store? Yes, yes I am.

I bought a little stack of vintage Hit Parader magazines on eBay some months ago, and I've been enjoying using them for collages. They aren't image-heavy, but they have plenty of bits of text to experiment with; I've used lines of text on my collaged greeting cards and also for found poems. The magazine used to publish the texts of popular song lyrics. There are some cool tiny images, especially in the ads in the back. Anyway, I've shared pictures that show of the results of me cutting up these magazines (collages, poems, etc!), but I can't remember ever posting a photo that shows an original "whole," so here's the cover of a 1953 issue of Hit Parader . I have another issue with Lucille Ball on the cover, and I haven't figured out the best thing to do with it yet.

Yesterday, I did the cutting-and-pasting process of laying out issue 14 of Teeny Tiny . I'd had the written content ready for a while, but I hadn't managed to finish the zine! Well, it takes a little concentration, as I like to find a nice combo of images to go along with the writing I'm publishing, and this issue contains work from seven different writers. I used a selection of bits and pieces from two vintage issues of Hit Parader magazine from the 1950s. Have you ever seen old issues of this magazine? Basically they printed the lyrics to popular songs and then also included some profiles of pop stars and maybe some articles with tips on beauty and so on. The magazines have some fun little advertisements, especially toward the back, with illustrations that are just the right size for my zine. I also used a couple of pictures cut from a book on the solar system I bought at the thrift store some time ago to use for the greeting cards I make with images of the moon ...

I was looking through some old photos from my collection and found one I don't remember seeing before. This is a family friend, Jane Reed. She grew up with my grandpa and was another grandma to me. I love the combo of her perfect outfit and the employment agency sign. I have to imagine that she was going for a job interview or heading to work when she cleverly decided to have this snapshot taken, but who knows? I would guess that this was taken around 1940. I may have to use a copy of this photo in a collage piece somehow. It really made me smile to find it.