Spotlight on... Naomi Vona, vintage photo artist

Aren't these beautiful? They were a Christmas present to Declan and me from his sister, and I absolutely love them.

They are collages created on original old black and white photos, and are the work of Dublin-based Italian artist Naomi Vona.

Vona uses different materials to create her doctored photos; these use stickers and washi tape. But she also uses pens, acrylics, highlighters, paper and found materials to alter the vintage snaps she collects.

Here are some more of her pieces, which you can find for sale on Etsy, as well as other art sites including Rise Art and Art Finder. She's prolific, it was hard to choose just a few favourites. I love this one.

A lot of the old photos have scribbles on them, and even dates, like this one, which is also excellently surreal.

It's such a simple idea, but executed with such imagination.

I scouted about for more information about Vona and liked this quote from an interview she did with the Australian magazine, Frankie: "I try to play around with these materials but I am also open to experimenting with new materials. I am not patient, so I want to use materials that are easy to apply and you don’t have to wait hours to make them dry. That’s really childish, but I cannot wait!"

Of her work, and in the same interview mentioned above, she says: "The fascination for the past is the key, the flashing colours are the portal. I like to imagine that I have an imaginary portal that brings me into the past."

She also makes bigger artworks in the same style.

But back to our pair. They're not yet on the wall, because we can't decide how best to frame them.

Initially I thought of getting one of these sorts of frames, which you can pick up all over the place, including on Not on the High Street.

I love them, but I'm not sure it'd do the photo justice: vintage style frame + vintage style photo might reduce the impact. What do you think?

Alternatively, this is the style of frame Vona has on her own site, by way of example. Nice and simple.

But I'm also fond of Habitat's floating Bacall frames. This is how that style looks, I've used it for my Claire Scully print, which you can read about here.

But the smallest Bacall isn't quite small enough. So I think I'm veering towards this kind of thing, below.

It's an old contact sheet of photos my brother took of me and my mum when I was little. He used to be a photographer and is now a pretty swishy art picture framer, and did this himself as a pretty amazing present.

I love the way the edges of the sheet stick up, and how the inside of the box frame appears seamless.

It's a shame that my brother lives and works in Sydney, but perhaps we can get our local picture framer to approximate the effect.

Which type of frame do you think I should pick? Do share your thoughts in the comments below.

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