Getting Ready to Boogie

Mary Ann Moss, author of the vastly entertaining blog Dispatch From LA and teacher of the online class called "Remains of the Day" (read about it here), is getting ready to offer a new online class called "Full Tilt Boogie" which she describes here.   More details and the class sign-up will be coming in June (for which we are waiting with bated breath) but for now, all we really know for sure is that we are to search on eBay, at antique shows, flea markets and yard sales, and/or in our grandmother's cupboard to find vintage photo albums.  I immediately took her advice to heart when she first mentioned this new class back in March and found this album on eBay:

As you can see, the cover is flaking away, every time I touch it, more bits fall off but chances are we'll be covering that up somehow, so I'm not too concerned and it's not exactly a design that I am anxious to preserve.  However, the album does have a faded, green velvet spine and measures about 8 by 11 inches, with the clasp intact:

I picked it up on eBay for only $10.  It cost just a bit more than that to ship it but I figure it's worth it.  The inside pages are in really good shape:

Then when I was down in Virginia last month, trolling an antique market with Heather, I found this beautiful album:

Just a bit of a dent in the bottom right hand part of the front cover, as you can see (one wonders what the story behind that small indentation might be - was it the result of warding off the attentions of an unwanted suitor? deflecting a sword thrust or stray bullet? chewed by a beloved pet?), but with this lovely worn velvet fabric on the spine and back cover:

However, the pages inside of this album are not in such good shape:

but again, I'm not too worried, as Mary Ann says she'll be teaching us how to make albums using just the outside covers and/or the inside pages of our photo albums, so I'm ready either way.

As my friend Diane says in her blog post (read it here) on this same topic, it is definitely addictive once you start looking at these albums and picking up a few for yourself. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the amazing deal I got on yet another album two weeks ago when I went to the Aberfoyle antique market.