Sourcing Vintage Graphics

One of the questions I get most often — from beginners and experienced junk journalers alike — is this: where do you find all that beautiful vintage imagery?

It's a fair question, because the right vintage graphic can transform a page in a way that very few other elements can. There's something about genuinely old imagery — the printing techniques, the color palettes, the aesthetic conventions of another era — that carries a warmth and authenticity that modern reproductions rarely quite capture. The good news: there is more beautiful vintage imagery available, more accessibly, than at any previous point in history. Let me show you where to look.

The Public Domain: Your Best Friend

Here's the most important thing to understand before you start sourcing vintage images: a tremendous amount of it is completely free and completely legal to use. Copyright protection in the United States expires 95 years after publication for works published before 1978. This means that virtually everything published before 1929 is now in the public domain — meaning it belongs to everyone, can be reproduced freely, and can be used in your art without permission or payment. This includes: Victorian botanical illustrations, 19th century engravings, Edwardian advertising imagery, early 20th century postcard designs, vintage sheet music covers, antique map illustrations, old newspaper mastheads, vintage seed catalog artwork, 19th century scientific diagrams, and thousands of other categories of imagery that are gorgeous, historically rich, and entirely free to use.

Where to Find It

The Internet Archive (archive.org). This is one of the great treasures of the internet, a nonprofit digital library that has scanned millions of books, magazines, and ephemera from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Search for vintage magazines, old catalogs, antique books on natural history or botany, or any specific subject you're interested in. The scanned pages are downloadable at high resolution.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (biodiversitylibrary.org). Specifically for natural history imagery — botanical illustrations, entomological drawings, bird illustrations, zoological prints. The quality of the source material is extraordinary — these are scientific publications from the 18th and 19th centuries, illustrated by some of the finest artists of those eras. Completely free, completely public domain.

Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org). A vast repository of images in the public domain, including art, historical photographs, scientific illustrations, maps, and much more. The search function is useful; browsing by category is even better.

The New York Public Library Digital Collections (digitalcollections.nypl.org). One of the finest digitized collections of vintage imagery available, including fashion plates, trade cards, vintage photographs, menus, posters, maps, and an extraordinary range of historical ephemera. High-resolution downloads available for many items.

The Library of Congress (loc.gov/collections). An enormous digitized collection including vintage photographs, posters, maps, sheet music covers, and ephemera of every description. The search is excellent and many items are available in very high resolution.

Rawpixel.com. A commercial site that has made a business of curating, cleaning, and presenting public domain vintage imagery. Many images are free; a premium subscription unlocks more. The curation quality is high — they've done the work of selecting the best material — and the images are well-prepared for printing.

The Vintage Workshop and other Etsy sellers. If you'd rather purchase a curated, print-ready collection than source individual images yourself, there are many excellent sellers on Etsy who curate and prepare vintage imagery for crafting use. The pricing is usually very reasonable and the curation work is valuable.

Preparing Images for Printing

Once you've found your images, a few practical notes on getting them print-ready. Download the highest resolution version available. For printing at 4x6 inches or larger, you need at least 300 DPI at the intended print size. The high-resolution scans from the sources above are usually more than adequate. Adjust levels before printing. Old scans often have a yellowish cast or low contrast. A quick levels adjustment in any basic photo editor — increasing contrast slightly, adjusting the white point — can dramatically improve the printed result. Print on the right paper. Vintage imagery looks best on warm-toned papers — ivory, cream, or light tan — rather than bright white. The warm paper tone integrates the imagery into your pages in a way that bright white paper doesn't.

The Ethics of It

Public domain imagery is genuinely free to use. But a few principles worth holding: Be certain something is actually in the public domain before you use it commercially. If you're making pages for personal use only, the bar is lower. If you're selling finished journals, be more careful about provenance. Credit extraordinary institutions when you can. The Internet Archive and the Biodiversity Heritage Library do extraordinary public good work. Mentioning them when you share work that incorporates their resources is a small gesture of appreciation. The world of vintage imagery is vast and beautiful and generously available. Go find your favorites.

Star Phoenix Studio kits are designed with the same love of vintage imagery and historical aesthetics that sends us all down the sourcing rabbit hole. Browse the collections at starphoenixstudio.com.

— Sandy 🦋

Save this post as a reference — it's one you'll return to — and share it with every junk journaler who's been wondering where the beautiful old images come from.