The Entertainer

My First Altered Playing Card (APC)

I recently made an Altered Playing Card for a trade and have been wanting to make some for my own collection, too. My deck will be themed Postage Stamps of Famous Women.

When I saw that this week's theme for Collage Obsession was Entertainers, I knew right away I wanted to do Marlene Dietrich in the film Morocco, true entertainment style with the top hat and all! I remembered I had a stamp of her in my stash, and printed a black and white picture to go with it.



Here's my 8 of Clubs with Marlene Dietrich. The stamp is mounted on a leftover pink paper with gold embossed decoration, and the see-through oriental flower background is a decoupaged napkin.


APCs are often collected with a purpose of getting the whole deck in one theme. I had been thinking of a theme for a while but when I heard of someone collecting this theme, Postage Stamps of Famous Women, I knew that was what I wanted to collect. I asked my trading partner to make sure she didn't mind my copying the idea, but she was just glad to hear I'd loved it.

I had lots of foreign penpals as a school girl and ever since, I've found it exciting how much you can learn from postage stamps. Not only are they often beautifully designed, they can tell you many things about their countries. Who are the women that are honoured in postage stamps, and what did they do to make their mark in the history books?