First Night Design | Happy Easter!

Size: Greeting Card

• Dimensions: 5″ x 7″ (portrait) or 7″ x 5″ (landscape)
• Full color CMYK print process
• All-sided printing for no additional cost
• Printable area on the back of the card is 3″ x 4″ (portrait) or 4″ x 3″ (landscape)

Standard white envelopes included

Paper Type: Matte

The most popular paper choice, Matte’s eggshell texture is soft to the touch with a smooth finish that provides the perfect backdrop for your chosen designs.

• Light white, uncoated matte finish with an eggshell texture
• Paper is easy to write on and won’t smudge
• Made and printed in the USA

Source: Hot Cross Buns Easter Basket #1 Card | Zazzle

N.B. I’m not currently responding to comments or visiting blogs because of ill-health but I much appreciate your support.

Take care and keep laughing!

Hot Cross Buns Easter Basket #1 Travel Mug | Zazzle #Sold!

Style: Travel/Commuter Mug

You don’t have to give up a colorful, funny, or attractive design for the function of a top-notch travel mug. Zazzle’s commuter mugs feature a rubber-lined lid for a tight, spill-resistant seal, twist the lid to reveal the sip opening! So, take your favorite photo, monogram, pattern, or cool design with you on your new favorite mug.

• Dimension: 3.5” diameter x 6.2″ h; 14-ounce capacity
• Materials: Stainless steel body; plastic handle and base; rubber-lined plastic lid
• Double-walled stainless steel helps will keep your drink of choice hot
• Do not microwave; hand wash recommended
• Printed on demand in San José, California

 

Source: Hot Cross Buns Easter Basket #1 Travel Mug | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Saint-Étienne Re-imagined #Art #Repost

As you know, I can never resist altering a modern photograph in order to give it a vintage feel. The original photograph of Saint Étienne Fontaine du Square Jean Cocteau in Paris is by Daniel Vill…

Source: First Night Design | Saint-Étienne Re-imagined #Art

First Night Design | Church at Twilight #Art

Church at Twilight © Sarah Vernon

To say I was influenced by the atmosphere of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White — must read it again — would be bending the truth, although I’ve included that sentence in the description boxes at galleries. However, only when I had finished creating it did the book come immediately to mind.

I have used a detail from a photograph by Stefan Ringler which I’ve warped and extended. This I added to Photoshop in Soft Light mode over a texture from 2 Lil’ Owls, Beguiling-5. I made various adjustments to give the roof of the church more definition and provide extra light on the walls. I like it and I hope you do too.

And here comes the promotion bit! If you haven’t read The Woman in White, you have a treat in store. Buy it immediately!

‘The Woman in White (1859-60) is the first and greatest `Sensation Novel’. Walter Hartright’s mysterious midnight encounter with the woman in white draws him into a vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, and international intrigue.

The novel is dominated by two of the finest creations in all Victorian fiction – Marion Halcombe, dark, mannish, yet irresistibly fascinating, and Count Fosco, the sinister and flamboyant `Napoleon of Crime’. A masterwork of intricate construction, The Woman in White sets new standards of suspense and excitement, and achieved sales which topped even those of Dickens, Collins’s friend and mentor.’

Apart from being besotted by the story, which bears repeated reading, the second time I read it, I was appearing in The Beaux Stratagem at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley (1978), wherein lies a tale. I remember waiting at the overground station for the train to Bromley with book in hand and trying to paint my fingernails with the palest of pinks. For The Beaux Stratagem, I hear you ask? Alas, yes. I was trying to cover my stress-spotted and ridged nails. The director’s wife spotted it immediately and I was told to remove it. Quite rightly.

Not the most prepossessing of theatres [Wikimedia]

Anyway, back to the railway station. The train arrived (early) and in my haste to replace the top on the nail polish, put the book in my bag and board the train, I spilt the polish all over the book and my rather chi-chi wrap-around skirt.  The skirt could never be worn again but the book still graces my bookshelves and always will.

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 | Saint Étienne Re-imagined #Art

Saint-Étienne Re-imagined © Sarah Vernon

As you know, I can never resist altering a modern photograph in order to give it a vintage feel. The original photograph of Saint Étienne Fontaine du Square Jean Cocteau in Paris is by Daniel Villafruela on Wikimedia which I have blended with textures from 2 Lil’ Owls.

---

“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”
― Jean Cocteau

---

 “Be yourself. The world worships the original.”
― Jean Cocteau

---

“We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like? ”
― Jean Cocteau

---

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

Take care and keep laughing!

Mosque of the Janissaries

Mosque of the Janissaries

The perfect binder to keep all your travel plans in one place!  This is a digital painting of the mosque in the Venetian Harbour in Chania, Crete.  It is one of the oldest surviving buildings from the time of the Ottoman Empire and was built in 1645.  Worship took place in the mosque until 1923 when the Muslims left the island in an exchange between Greece and Turkey.  Janissaries is the Turkish word for ‘new troops’, men who were recruited, ironically, from the non-Muslim fraternity and worked as household troops and bodyguards of the sultan. Once containing the Chania museum, in recent years the mosque has been hosting small art exhibitions.

Take care and keep laughing!