Featured Collectible - Vintage Paint By Numbers

The June issue of Country Living magazine has a great feature about a couple who turned their boring stairwell into a gallery space for their vintage paint by number painting collection. As you can see it turned out beautifully, and I am so incredibly jealous!

It's always fun to find well-done PBNs out at the sales or at the flea market, and usually they can be found for a decent price. But if you are trying to build a large collection like this one, or you are looking for specific themes, eBay is the way to go. There is always a large variety to choose from, and the prices seem to be all over the map, depending on subject matter, quality, size, and, of course, your competition.

A few of the most popular (and highest dollar) subjects are animals, birds, flowers, Asian themes, tropical themes, and women, especially if they are partially or all the way nude. In an effort to keep my blog rated PG, I won't show the boobies here, but check out what this pair sold for recently... yowza!

Here are some of my favorites that are currently up for sale:

I'm so tempted to bid on this set - it's Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher - too cute!

This one has a very unique subject matter - a lady peeling potatoes - and I love the blue of her jacket!

Here's one that is a great whimsical, dreamlike scene - and the seller has another similar one up for sale as well, so you could have a set!

This little still life would be so cute in a vintage style kitchen - especially one that is occupied by a little black cat...

You can also find unused vintage and new kits, I'm in love with this vintage miniature songbird kit - they would be so cute with the other birds in my kitchen. I think as long as the paints are oil paints you could still use the old kits, but if they have gone bad you could always buy new paints...

The newer kits that I looked at weren't all that inspiring, most of them lacked that vintage style charm, at least to me. I did find a couple simple, modern styles from a company called Dimensions, my favorite being this one of Ferns. It might be fun to give actually painting one a try!

Ok, I could go on all day and I really need to get back to work, so if you want to see more (and there is so much more to see, I really just scratched the surface here!) just click and enjoy... ;)