Botanical Prints and the Ephemeral Re-org

Ever find that your Pinterest boards end up taking on a life you never intended for them? How do you a browse and find a proper botanical print for your next collage project when you have to wade through a smorgasbord of 1,600 images of all things ephemera?

almond blossom botanical print

It's called a re-org which is short for reorganization. It's true, I'm a bit of a Pinterest junkie. The dangerous part of this equation is that I could be looking for a flower and see a really great image of an apple. Here's what happens next.

pink mushroom botanical print

When my first exposure to this image is a source that wants me to pay for it, obsession takes its grip. I've now made it my personal mission to find that image thereby raising the level of the desire-o-meter from mere "like it and want it" to "no way in hell will I live without it."

deutsche pomologie

Since I know that images dated in the 19th century or earlier are going to fall somewhere in the public domain, it then becomes a personal challenge for me to find a copy of it free of watermarks and in a respectably useable size.

lily of the valley

Much of the time I am successful however I don't recommend this method because it not only sucks up time like a Hoover but 400 pins and half a day later you now need a new board that you never imagined you'd need before today.

vintage rose ephemera

Does anyone else out there do this or is it a Virgo thing? Ha! At any rate, please enjoy the images and if you get a moment, stop by and visit my Botanical Ephemera and Prints board on Pinterest.

Okay to Copyright Public Domain Images?

If you're a collage artist using public domain images in your work, eventually you're bound to hear from the morality police if you blog long enough. These would be those gutless, anonymously commenting, cowards who have somehow made it their business to point out the error of your plagiaristic ways but is it plagiarism?

What does public domain mean? The below is extracted directly from Wikipedia, one of the largest online resources for public domain material. Further explanation can be found by reading the article Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States.

The public domain is generally defined (e.g. by the U.S. Copyright Office) as the sum of works that are not copyrighted, i.e.

• that were not eligible for copyright in the first place, or
• whose copyright has expired, or
• that were released into the public domain by the copyright holder

That said, what can you do with public domain works? Public domain means the work is 100% free for use, including private and commercial use. Let me tell you, writers do this all the time. Some of those self help books you're so fond of reading? Yep, altered public domain material. This also means that the average Jane can shamelessly slather unaltered, public domain images with a copyright or watermark and claim it as her own.

original, unaltered vintage ephemera

The perfume image above can currently be found on at least two blogs. Altered Artifacts claims full copyright to her image while Vintage Feedsacks offers this public domain image to us to use as we please. I guess that would include digital downloads of any kind. Hmmm . . . Which one should I choose? I've seen Etsy sellers offer collage sheets for sale that are filled with unaltered, public domain images that I've been able to find on Wikimedia. Guess what? Like it or not, it's legal!

From my observations, the internet is riddled with similar examples and all are considered legal in the United States although one could argue that the former example is considered plagiarism since it is unaltered and the original source is not cited.

Anywho, if others can can claim copyright and/or sell their unaltered public domain images, I'm certainly not going to suddenly get religion about altering public domain images and incorporating them into a nicely designed and yes, original piece of digital collage. It's not for anyone else to decide how they, you or I should use the public domain images so keep calm and collage with confidence my friends. :)