Post Card Art

 For several years now, C has collected old post cards from flea markets and antique stores. Many of them are historic Kansas City tourism cards, created of historic buildings, parks and boulevards in the early 1900's.

One of his favorites has always been the Power & Light building. It's one of downtown's most beautiful buildings, in our opinion, and the post card is beautiful and full of color. Plus, on the right end of it you can see the edge of the President Hotel, which is where we stayed after our wedding - see the red PRE toward the bottom right corner?

And this particular card, like many of our favorites we have collected, was actually mailed. I love the child's handwriting to his or her mother, and the fact that the sender had so much to say that it's written over every corner of the card. And notice there's no address - apparently there was only one Mrs. John W. Smith who lived in Bethany Missouri when this was sent!

 
So C decided to try something out. He scanned the post card at high resolution, and then doctored it up in Photoshop and had it printed at Costco. We weren't sure how it would turn out, but the print only cost $8, so we decided to give it a try and see what we ended up with. The result was a beautiful 20"x30" poster - one with great color and fun sentimental meaning to us. I did a quick Hobby Lobby trip for the frame ($50) and custom mat ($16), and voila! We had a great piece of art for our walls, for a total of $74 - not bad at all!

We hung the poster in our stairwell, where there is a great focal point and a wall that needed some dressing up. It brightens up the dark corner very well, and gives us this great little piece of beautiful Kansas City history to admire every day.