First Night Design | Midnight Shipwreck #New #Art

Midnight Shipwreck © Sarah Vernon Tank Top at Redbubble

When I was young, my father – a passionate sailor – bought a small yacht called Bruno of Bath. Eighteen months ago, I received an email from a couple who had bought her, seen a list of her previous owners from the 1960s, found me on the internet and told me they were restoring her. They have promised to sail her to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight where I now live and where Bruno was often moored so that I can see her again. This rusting pilot boat looks nothing like my father’s Westerly but I have named her in honour of my childhood adventures.

Original photograph from Absfreepic. Texture from Jewell of Distressed at Flickr.

Midnight Shipwreck © Sarah Vernon Framed Print at Redbubble

So far she’s only available on products at Redbubble but I will be uploading the picture to my other galleries shortly.

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America [14 fulfilment centres in 5 countries]
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

Time After Time Poster | Zazzle #Sold!

Source: Time After Time Poster | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

Through a Glass Darkly Fleece Blanket | Zazzle

Size: Fleece Blanket, 60″x80″

It’s hard to cuddle by yourself. But with these fully customizable comfy fleece blankets, you won’t have to anymore. Customize the entire front panel and wrap yourself in personalized plush luxury. Delicate, soft and colorful, it’s the perfect blanket for picnics in the park, outdoor events, and cozy winter snuggles.

• Available in 3 different sizes: small (30″x40″); medium (50″x 60″); large (60″x 80″)
• 100% buttery soft and cozy polyester fleece
• Edge-to-edge sublimation printing in vibrant full color
• Sturdy double edge stitching for a clean finish
• Back color is off-white
• Machine washable, gentle cycle, mild detergent
• Tumble dry low

Source: Through a Glass Darkly Fleece Blanket | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

Take care and keep laughing!

The Peacock Collection Envelope | Zazzle #Sold!

Hope you all had a splendid Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Style: A7 Greeting Card

Classic envelope for invitations and greeting cards. 7 ¼” wide x 5 ¼” high. Works well with laser or inkjet printers. Made for 7″ x 5″ or smaller invitations and cards. Includes free inside printing.

• Designer Tip: To ensure the highest quality print, please note that this product has multiple customizable design areas. The unfolded outside design area measures 9.2″ x 11.3″. For best results, please add 1/8″ bleed. The unfolded inside design area measures 9.2″ x 11.3″. For best results, please add 1/8″ bleed.

Paper Type: Basic

Your business and personal mailings will stand out with this smooth, vibrant, matte, 80lb text-weight paper. Contains 50% recycled content (10% post-consumer and 40% pre-consumer waste).

Source: The Peacock Collection Envelope | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

Lighthouse Impasto Large Clock | Zazzle #Sold!

Sight update: Even though I’m doing so much less in order to rest my eyes, boy, are they sore. The good news is that the hospital had a cancellation and the 6th January appointment has been brought forward to this coming Monday. Mind you, it’s still only a consultation so no resolution for either eye. Grrr! But hey. I’ve sold another clock, which is heartening.

Style: Round (Large)

It’s time to show off your favorite art, photos, and text with a custom round wall clock from Zazzle. Featured in two sizes, this wall clock is vibrantly printed with AcryliPrint®HD process to ensure the highest quality display of any content. Order this custom round wall clock for your walls or give to friends and family as a gift for a timeless treasure.

• 2 sizes: 8″ diameter (medium) or 10.75″ diameter (large).
• Material: Grade-A acrylic.
• One AA battery required (not included).

Source: Lighthouse Impasto Large Clock | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Autumn Fall #Art

Autumn Fall © Sarah Vernon Prints, Cards, Phone Cases, Attire, Home Decor & more… at Redbubble

This is an early effort that dates back to heaven knows when!

Autumn Fall © Sarah Vernon Pouches at Redbubble

Autumn Fall © Sarah Vernon Mugs at Redbubble

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“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

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Autumn Fall © Sarah Vernon Spiral Notebooks at Redbubble

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“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
― Albert Camus

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Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Accidental Abstract #Art

Buy Accidental Abstract Cushion © Sarah Vernon at Fine Art England

Created with my own photographs and scanned ephemera blended with a vintage architectural drawing from The Graphics Fairy.

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‘There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.’ Pablo Picasso

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Accidental Abstract Greeting Card

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‘The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai.’ J. G. Ballard

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Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Parrot in a Gilded Cage #Art ‘Don’t Even Think It!’

Parrot in a Gilded Cage Double-Sided Standard Business Cards (Pack Of 100) by FirstNightDesign

When I posted The Merry Widow image the other week, BeetleyPete assumed (it was a compliment) that I had coloured the central image. In fact, I hadn’t, and the colours were on the original Play Pictorial Cover. However, Parrot in a Gilded Cage is a different matter. The illustration is a black & white sketch from one of my vintage Children’s Encyclopaedia and I coloured it. So there you go, Pete!

Parrot Quote Greeting Card by FirstNightDesign

Available at the following galleries:
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Parrot Fashion #Art

Parrot Fashion Framed Print © Sarah Vernon – Buy from Crated

I’ve been reading up about the different red-headed parrots, of which this is one, but I can’t begin to tell you which. The name on the original print from the Biodiversity Heritage Library that I have used, ‘platycercus’, seems to be a very general term, hence the confusion. I have combined it with several textures of my own.

Didn’t you always know that parrots were extremely intelligent? I give you this excerpt from Creation.com:

[…] researchers have shown what many parrot owners have known or suspected—that parrots can use individual words in appropriate situations. For example, studies by Brandeis University (USA) researcher Dr Irene Pepperberg on an African Grey parrot named “Alex” showed that these birds have an impressive intelligence—about the same as a five-year-old child. When Pepperberg’s research subjects spoke English, it was not mere “parrot fashion”. She said, “If I ask Alex … how many keys; he’ll tell me ‘two’. If I ask him what colour, he’ll say ‘green’ and if I ask him what shape, he’ll say ‘three-quarter’.” He was able to correctly identify 100 objects, do simple addition and identify seven colours, just as children do.

The article goes on to say that parrots can also behave like five-year-old children in deliberately choosing not to give the right answer even though they know it full well. Wouldn’t you just know it!

Parrot Fashion 4.25×5.5 Paper Invitation Card

Parrot Fashion Laptop Skin © Sarah Vernon – Buy from Redbubble

• The World Parrot Trust
  This Parrot Has The Most Hilariously Evil Laugh. Soon He Will Take Over The World.

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Art | Swimming Against the Tide #Art

Buy a framed print from Crated © Sarah Vernon

Layer upon layer, clip art upon clip art and texture upon texture went into the mix for this ‘fishy’ collage. All mine own. This a very early piece and I thought it could do with some fresh air. So here it is!

Buy Swimming Against the Tide Flasks from Zazzle

Buy a studio pouch from Redbubble © Sarah Vernon

Buy US stamps at Zazzle

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Bound for Santiago #Art

Bound for Santiago © Sarah Vernon

I created Bound for Santiago in the form of a collage and then blended the images into one with Photoshop. It comprises one of my textured backgrounds, two photos by Joshua Earle at Unsplash, and a lovely antique ship by Zakhar Kleyman on Flickr.

Why Santiago? The title came fully formed from the mouth of Mr FND; where would we be without dreams and imagination? The fact that the antique ship photograph was taken from Staten Island ferry is neither here nor there!

Bound for Santiago Tote Bag © Sarah Vernon

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | A Remarkable First Night #Art #Theatre

Bring Up the Curtain © Sarah Vernon – Buy @ Crated

My starting point for this piece was a divine original book-plate from 1899 of the British actress Miss Dorothea Baird (1875-1933), which I bought from collectors Vintage Views, along with a few other goodies which will be revealed in the weeks to come.

I will be posting the original on First Night Vintage at some point but here I have superimposed a vintage theatre programme from my archive for a production at the Lyric Theatre onto the curtains of the original. If I were to tell you the number of other images and textures I used, including Island in the Storm, you probably wouldn’t believe me!

Dorothea Baird first appeared on stage  in 1894 for the Oxford University Dramatic Society or OUDS as Iris in The Tempest. She performed in several Shakespeare productions in the following years, often with her husband, H. B. Irving, Sir Henry’s son. She also originated the part of Mrs Darling in Peter Pan (1904). It was a short but notable career, ending in 1913 when she retired and concentrated her energies on charitable causes.

Mr. H. B. Irving (1870 – 1919) as Hamlet at the Adelphi Theatre 1904.

Mr H B Irving Greeting Card

The text below is an extract from what is printed on the reverse side of the book-plate and is an effusive, to say the least, appraisal of Miss Baird and her trumpeted performance in the title role of George du Maurier’s Trilby, produced at the Haymarket Theatre in 1895. You will not have read the like in the 20th or 21st century!

‘MISS DOROTHEA BAIRD made her first appearance on the stage in 1894, when she played Iris in “The Tempest,” and Galatea in “Pygmalion and Galatea,” at the performances of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. After that, Miss Baird went a-touring with Mr. Ben Greet’s company—whence we have derived so many stage recruits—and in her time played many parts. But to Londoners, Miss Dorothea Baird is Trilby; Trilby, in spite of her appearance as the heroine of Mr. Louis Parker’s play, ” The Happy Life,” at the Duke of York’s Theatre; in spite of her Phoebe in “As You Like It,” at the St. James’s; in spite of her charming Diane in “A Court Scandal,” at the Court Theatre. And, whatever may be the success in store for her, it is probable that it is of her Trilby we shall tell our grandchildren when we inform them in the usual way that acting was acting in our young days [….] From the above will be learned the impressions of the moment of a remarkable “first night.”‘

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Finches Looking…probably for seeds!

Finches Looking © Sarah Vernon [Zazzle US]

I’m not particularly good at natural history. I can admire and squeak with delight at a bird or a flower but ask me to name them and I’ll look at you blankly. I downloaded this bird print of c.1879 from The Graphics Fairy and since the inestimable Karen Watson had not specified anything other than ‘birds’, I searched high and low (on Google, of course) to find out what kind of creature I was attempting to ‘doctor’ with my own textures and vintage postcard background.

It led me to a site selling prints from another copy of the 19th century book from which it comes. I know now that they are finches. If push had come to shove, I’d probably have said swallows.

Finches Looking Canvas Print

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Playing with the Masters

Glass Ceiling © First Night Design

This is what can happen when you play around with old paintings.  I’m not going to tell you which paintings I used, and if you can detect something you think you know, I will not have done my job properly!

Take care and keep laughing!

The Charm of Lighthouses

Lighthouse in Chania. Original art © First Night Design. Digital painting of the lighthouse in Chania, Crete, using GMX-Photo Painter.

Lighthouse Impasto Clock Original art © First Night Design

Lighthouse in the Mist by FirstNightDesign

I’ve been just a little obsessed with lighthouses recently. It’s not only the classic lighthouse shape that appeals but what it stands for: a light in the dark to help you navigate stormy waters. Mine are particularly stormy now and I can see no lighthouse on the horizon. Nevertheless, as I’ve said before, I’m a survivor, darlings, so I daresay I shall get through one way or another!

I’m a Survivor, Darling! Post Card by FirstNightDesign

Take care and keep laughing!

Related articles

• Lighthouse tours to bring history to life (goerie.com)
• Photos: Lighthouse Homes for Sale (abcnews.go.com)
• The Old Head of Kinsale Lighthouse (darlingviolets.wordpress.com)