First place you've gotta go is your friendly, neighborhood thrift store, where true bargains can still be found. These are all items I found at thrift stores, all items that I paid $1.00 for.
Click on pictures if you want to see them larger. First up is this cute little horse painting. It's small, only about 6" wide, done on a piece of plywood. It might have been done on a mass production basis, or maybe someone just did it for fun. The colors look like basic paint by numbers, and there is no gessoing or preparation of the wood underneath the painting, so where it has been stored some of the paint has worn off, showing the wood underneath. It gives it some character, though. It's a nice little shabby-chic item for my wife's bathroom which is decorated in early cowgirl.
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These fine gorillas I call Mr. and Mrs. Kong. I found this salt-and-pepper shaker set for $1.00 and when I took them home I felt like I'd just won the Irish Sweepstakes. They have the paint worn off in many spots, which shows they were actually used, not just stuck on a shelf (like we have them). The picture doesn't do them justice. For instance, the pepper shaker has a dark face and the salt shaker has a white face. Very unsubtle! I like it.
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Calling Mars! Earth calling Mars! I found this tin, which originally contained some sort of candy from Holland (maybe those little salty licorice bits that give you a pucker-face but you start to like when you eat enough of them). I love the girl's headdress, which looks like a pair of angel wings, and those little satellite-style solar panels coming out of her head are a nice touch. Not to mention the gal looks kind of...well, wholesome. Toothsome, too.
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These next little guys I call the porkin' pigs, or the screwpigs, or whatever comes (ho-ho) into my dirty mind. I found the back pig first, then had to search a shelf for his mate. The funny thing was that the thrift store selling this little pair is the one owned by the Mormon church. It's something I wouldn't expect to find in one of their stores, but obviously I did. Someone must've gotten a big kick out of them; at least as big as the one I get from them. Even as I type this I look to my right, and on my bookshelf I see them humping away. Hey, eat, drink, screw and be merry...tomorrow you could be bacon!
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I'm kind of cheating with this one because I didn't actually buy it. I got it in change from a thrift store purchase and when I saw it I was very pleased. This is guerilla protest! I visualize some guy in his basement taking the dollar bills he got in change that day and carefully applying his stamp to them. It's against the law to deface U.S. currency, but who's going to track him down and arrest him? Dollar bills are only in circulation a matter of weeks or months, anyway. But in the meantime this rebel rubber-stamper continues to put his mark on the money! Right on, bro'!
Ciao for now, El Postino
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