Tag: smoking

Signs Of The Times: Now

/ Deanna / 1 Comment

So I’m at the Mall Of America last weekend and, as dirty, rotten smoker, I have to find the properly designated areas to do my nasty business in. (I want to rant about the whole unfairness of how those addicted to a legal substance are treated, but someone else has already done that; see Smokers are the new lepers.) After following all the arrows in the transportation area, I arrive at the spot. But hello, what’s this? Yup, right above all the “designated smoking area” signs there are even larger “no loitering” signs. WTF? I’m pretty sure the very definition of loitering is smoking a cig in the designated area. Is this to keep non-smokers out? Another way to punish and fine smokers? It’s a pretty fresh hell.

PS Sorry the photo’s a bit blurry — but I took a quick pic as I wanted to hurry the hell on out of there before I was snagged for loitering!

no smoking loitering signs

Ah, The Chick’s An Old Battle Ax

/ Deanna / 4 Comments

The “new woman” rode bicycles — and she smoked and likely even chewed tobaccie. So it makes sense that folks would advertise tobacco directly to her. In this antique tobacco ad, the angel of morality and the home is to be sold on the idea of getting said tobacco for her man — but it’s difficult not to find the “Battle Ax” name sending yet another message about how she should stop bitching about the gentleman’s use of tobacco products. Ad via my husband’s website, Dakota Death Trip.

“The New Woman”

Battle Ax Plug

A Great Big Piece For 10 Cents

The “new woman” favors economy and she always buys “Battle Ax” for her sweetheart. She knows that a 5-cent piece of “Battle Ax” is nearly twice as large as a 10-cent piece of other high grade brands. Try it yourself and you will see why “Battle Ax” is such a popular favorite all over the United States.

Antique_Battle_Ax_Tobacco_Ad

Filter, Flavor, Color Too With Glamorous Vanity Fair Cigarettes

/ Deanna / 1 Comment

Ahh, the great marketing movement of making things pink to sell them to women… This time, ladies, turn in your pink lungs for pink smokes.

Also available in pastel blue, for that oxygen deprived look.

According to Behind The Smoke on Flickr, the Vanity Fair cigarettes were only around for five years, at which point they were replaced by the Vogue Color cigarettes, which contained an assortment of five colors.

Cheap Thrills Thursday: Shabby Gnome Chic

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OK, so we didn’t make a lot of money at our rummage sale this year — but we did empty our house of a lot of clutter. However, I did keep a few things that my mother had sent over for the sale. (Since she said we could keep the profits & dump whatever didn’t sell, I figured she wouldn’t mind.) One of the items I opted to keep is this odd, badly chipped, vintage painted wooden man.

vintage-shabby-painted-wooden-man

I had dubbed him “the little German gnomish guy.” I can’t say why… due to his red-dotted mushroom cap hat, basket full of mushrooms and handful of pine cones he could be Swiss or Austrian or some other European dude.

Anyway, we had set him out for sale for a whopping 50 cents — and still couldn’t sell him. Maybe because we didn’t know what he was. Other than “odd,” I mean.

People picked him up. A lot.

In case you aren’t familiar with having yard sales, or selling at flea markets, etc., there’s always a “little German gnomish guy” at every sale. One object that, for whatever reason, is continually picked up, asked about, but doesn’t sell. At least not for a very long time. It’s not because it’s too highly priced (this guy was only 50 cents), but because he’s unusual enough to beckon and yet too unusual for a person to justify “needing” it, especially if no one knows exactly what it is. This item is dubbed the “it” or conversation piece of the sale. (Former public sale mystery “it” items have included an antique metal buckled leather loop for some sort of horse-pulling harness-esque thing and a vintage hand-held lemon press.)

When it became obvious the little German gnomish guy was the “it” piece for this sale, we let him lure people over with his paint-chipped vintage charm and start the conversation ourselves with a, “We don’t know what he is, besides ‘vintage’ and ‘shabby gnome chic’… Do you know what he is?”

vintage-shabby-gnome-chic

Eventually, as usual with these “it” items, a person came along who knew what the shabby chic wooden guy was: an incense burner. You set his open bottom over a burning cone of incense and the smoke wafts up & out through his little ‘O’ of a mouth, like he’s smoking.

Once this discovery was made, we slapped our heads like we could have had V-8s. Then I shuttled him the house to show the kids. “Oooooh, can we keep him?” Of course we were keeping him; we’d have to try him at least once, right?

Even if the stem of his pipe is stuck in his throat like some twisted moral interpretation of “smoking kills.”

vintage-kitsch-incense-burner

Smoking Hot Fashion: Recycled From Cigarette Butts

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Chilean designer Alexandra Guerrero’s Mantis line of fashions were inspired by the burning question of what to do with the vast amounts of cigarette butts strewn about in the City of Santiago Chile.

These are not toxic textiles; according to an interview with the designer at GreenMuse, the garments are made of 90% sheep wool and 10% purified cigarette butts:

The purification process begins with the cigarette butts going through autoclaves (a pressurized sanitation process). They are then washed in a solvent; they go through the autoclave again, are rinsed and dried, and, finally, are shredded to create a wool-like material. The resulting liquid byproduct is also being donated to be tested as a biological insecticide for plant pest control.

The percentage of recycled cig butts is hoped to be increased once it become more financially feasible.

cigarette-butt-haute-couture-by-alexandra-guerrero

Guerrero has cleaned and recycled about 5000 cigarette butts and designed a dress, a vest, a poncho, and a hat even some soap. Currently, the only way to purchase the items, viewable at her blog, is to contact her via email at mantis.yea @ gmail.com.

Bridal Madness: Vintage Bridal & Baby Shower Party Plans

/ Deanna / 10 Comments

(Thursday Thirteen header by Jenn.)

Are a lot of your friends announcing engagements, getting married and having the stork visit — so many, that you’re running out of party ideas and ways to celebrate? Here are 13 vintage ideas, loaded with kitsch and just begging you to use them, maybe even update them a bit…

Remember — all the images get much much larger when you click them — so read away!

1. How To Tell The Secret, aka bridal announcement ideas, from The Bride’s Party Book, published by Dennison. Some of these may be tweaked to fit other announcements — or even used to invite guests to the next event.

2. The next few bits come from Bridal Shower Party Games, “For As Many As 20 Guests” (presumably because it originally had 20 copies of each of the game sheets), Leister Game Company, Toledo, Ohio, (N-1400). The company is still around (but the site isn’t working — or they did just perish — so some links are to Goggle cache).

Inside the front cover, ads for baby & bridal party games and products. The company has gotten racier since then; now they have “Naughty Bingo” and “Condom Blow Jobs”. So you may prefer the quaint & corny vintage Leister games.

Anyway…

One of the party games is Card Pass — “a relay race that’s a little daisy!”

Totally believe you should open a brand new pack of playing cards for this; you don’t know where the hands of previous card holders have been and you’ll be sticking them in your mouth. :shudder:

3. A game called Lucky Pairs:

4. Want-Ad Marriage (which, by the way, is also a fun game to play on girls’ night — having you write each other’s ads):

5. Variation Mystery Feelers

(Don’t know about you, but I don’t want any of the objects back — they’ll be covered in toe-jam!)

6. A Game Of Pairs


(I could be crazy, but didn’t we just do that?)

7. This next one is a fill-in-the-blank game — but don’t get excited thinking it’s a Mad-Lib; it’s a geography quiz. You fill in the blanks of the Honeymoon Trip.

Sadly, the answers were on the back cover which has been cut; so you’ll have to figure out some of these by yourself. (Treat it like a test — like you have to be this smart to get married.)

8. This next one, Wedding Spell, is some twisted spelling bingo thing. Too complicated for me these instructions are. May Yoda help me.

9. Back to the Dennison’s book again…

This time, it’s the bride who gives a party (and isn’t it about time!)

I love the sweet-kitschy-goodness of making these little dolls with faces cut from magazines — I totally want to do this for other parties (but that could be another list of 13…)

And the legal team wants me to tell you not to stuff the cuff party favor with cigs; totally not healthy or PC, you know.

I’m totally skipping the wedding day stuff; I’m certain your bride is not going to let you make crepe paper couple centerpieces. Or crepe paper anything. That doesn’t make her Bridezilla either; she just doesn’t want the kitsch enshrined forever in photos on the in-laws mantle.

(If, for some reason, you need these crepe paper frights delights, let me know.)

10. “There Went The Bride” is “A Mock Wedding for Your Anniversary Celebration” — complete with kitsch skit.

Highlights include:

The bride “as seen by her future mother-in-law — carries rolling pin decorated with flowers”.

The clergyman begins the ceremony with, “Dear Friends, we are gathered here before this congregation of fellow sufferers to join this headstrong couple with the shackles of matrimony. If anyone present can show just cause why this painful ceremony should never take place — for heaven’s sake — speak up — tomorrow may be too late!”

The groom, repeating after the clergyman, vows: “I ____ take thee ____ for my duly wedded wife, to hold, if I have to, from this day forward, in spite of your ceaseless conversation, your unappetizing cooking, your nagging and complaining, your silly girl friends and willful spending — until death do us liberate.”

The bride, repeating after the clergyman, vows: “I ____ take thee ____ for my duly wedded husband, to hold if I have to, to tolerate your black cigars, to laugh at your corny jokes, to clean up after your poker parties, to balance on your budget, until death do us liberate!”

It’s not just me who sees the bitter irony in these two sets of vows… Is it?

Well, at least the ceremony ends with handcuffs… :wink:

11-13 First comes love, then comes marriage — and if you make it through the mock wedding anniversary celebration — next comes your friend with a baby carriage. Some announcements for the new arrival:

Upon My Sole! Announcements with a shoe theme
Non-Stop Flight Announcement has a flying stork theme
The Family Tree is an announcement stretching things — using a hat rack?
Ship’s Log has a nautical theme.

All the patterns for these baby announcements are found on page 24 and the scan is here:

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here