QSL Card And Vintage Ticket Clusters - Day 30 - The 100 Day Project

I've got to get moving on Day 30 of The 100 Day Challenge. There is a lot to do to finish the cluster book for my friend's birthday and I've only 5 days to do it. 😱

I had a good rummage through my shelves to find something I haven't used yet and came up with some QSL cards and some vintage bus tickets.

QSL cards

I originally became interested in QSL cards when I saw some art made from them in the Brighton Festival. A piece I particularly liked was one where the artist had cut out an example of all of the letters of the alphabet and arranged them into an A3 poster.

This inspired me to create some art of my own using them so I went on the hunt to find some and ended up buying loads over the following months. Sadly, I never got around to creating any art of my own from them and have only used a few as embelishments or on birthday cards. At some point I will probably try and get my daughter to resell them for her holiday fund.

For today's purposes I chose cards that had suitable designs to use as bases and then chose 2 bus tickets to complement them.

Oh, and if you're wondering what QSL cards are, you'll have to wait until The 100 Day Project is over when I might dedicate a whole post to them.I don't have time to go into it right now but basically they're special "postcards" exchanged by amateur radio operators to acknowledge their communications. They include details like date, time, and signal report and, as you can see by the photo,they usually have unique designs.

Vintage Bus Tickets

These bus tickets have a bit of a story going back to my childhood. I initially came across them when I was poking though my parents wardrobe, one Christmas time, hoping to get a glimpse of what presents I might be getting.

I saw the brown leather box and couldn't resist opening it revealing the vintage bus tickets. I summised that this was a present bought for my brother to play with. This was back in the day when pretend play was common place. However, on Christmas Day the ticket case never appeared and I forgot all about it. Presumably so did my parents. 😁

Many, many years later, when my Mum was having a big clear out she came across them and wondered if I would like them for my art so that's how they came to be on my shelf.

Inside the case are a bunch of tickets and one little wooden, 2-sided ticket holder with springs that hold the tickets in place.

What I really love about them is that the prices are in what we like to call in the UK, "old money", i.e. they are from pre-decimalisation which happened in 1971. Prior to that we had the £sd system - Pounds, shillings and pence - which was a bit weird as there were 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound. 😁 Good for our maths skills I suppose.

I also love that they had local adverts on the back which you can see on the tickets in the middle of the photo below.

Here is the finished cluster page.

Two more to go. I found something to make the next set of clusters from so that leaves just one more idea to come up with for the final page.

As I have more time this afternoon I could spend on this, I might go on another rummage and see if I can come up with the final idea.