Free Printable Vintage Background Paper - Second Reader

Free vintage background pages to use in your art journals, mixed media projects or as scrapbooking supplies! From the Children's Second Reader 1903, commercial rights for printing.

All The Printable Pages!

I LOVE having background papers from old books that I can use for my collages and mixed media, but there is always that "should I be tearing up old books?" thing that tugs at my heart!

I bought a passel of old books at an auction and I will be sharing pages from them for us all to print and use in our artwork!

Details About The Book

This book, The Children's Second Reader by Ellen M. Cyr, is in pretty bad condition. It's spine is broken and the front pages are falling out.

But it is so darn cool with all the old age spots and illustrations (I love how some kid drew on the one!)

It was published in 1903 by Ginn & Company Publishers, Boston, U. S. A., which puts it in the public domain in the US. They were originally written in the 1890's.

Doing a little research about Ellen, she was one of the first women to publish books under her own name which is very cool because most women were forced to either use their initials or use a pseudonym.

Why They Are Free

I love being able to share art supplies with my peeps for free! I get so many great messages from them (and sometimes pictures) of the projects they make with my freebies!

That said, I know that there are only so many old books around and living in Florida I am blessed that I can get them from auctions at a reasonable price.

Knowing that we are only tearing up one old book instead of all of them is a little comforting to me!

Commercial License For Printing

There is a super liberal license for using these pages as long as they are printed out first. You can even sell them whole just as they are!

You can also print them out and use them as background pages for junk journals for sale on Etsy, or use them in scrapbook layouts you have for sale.

There is no license to distribute these digitally, if you do want to share them with a friend, send her the link this page and she can get all the freebies in the library herself!

How To Download Them

These collage pages (and so much more) are in the freebie library. Most of the files are PDFs and you can download them and print them from your computer or your phone.

How To Print Them

These background pages are all formatted to print on 8.5"X11" letter sized paper. I like to use just copy paper for these because they are going to get collaged as backgrounds for my artwork.

Access The Freebie Library!

Click the link or the image below to get a password to the freebies library! (if you already have the pasword click here - the background pages are all the way at the bottom of the freebies!)