View of a Harbour – Caspar David Friedrich Card | Zazzle #Sold!

View of a Harbour – Caspar David Friedrich Card created by FirstNightVintage.

Source: View of a Harbour – Caspar David Friedrich Card | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

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First Night Design | Sailing to the Moon #Art #Repost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 25th July 2015

When I reblog my posts, I try to leave a decent gap and hope to catch more recent followers who have not seen a piece before or to garner a new audience for a very old post when hardly anyone was following. Sailing to the Moon received a huge amount of likes and comments. I haven’t checked the statistics but I suspect it’s one of the most popular posts on First Night Design — very pleasing. I’m re-blogging it because I love it and I have nothing else to show!

‘What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all th…

Source: First Night Design | Sailing to the Moon #Art | First Night Design

First Night Design | Drifting Downstream #Art

Buy framed print from Crated

Original photo by Scott Webb from Unsplash lovingly blended with a texture from Kerstin Frank to create a ‘painting’.

Buy Greeting Cards from Zazzle

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“Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

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Buy the duvet from Fine Art America or Fine Art England

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“Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. – Amir”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

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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 | Looking for Fossils #Art

Looking for Fossils © Sarah Vernon at Redbubble

I combined two vintage beach photos from Flickr which I melted together so that the beach was no longer empty but contained two boys, one looking at the camera. There were originally three of them but the third lad didn’t quite work on the beach of the other photo. I adjusted him so that he was ankle-deep looking out to sea but I couldn’t make it look real so I drowned him! I favourited these photos on Flickr in the sure hope that I could go back to my ‘favourites’ and retrieve the web addresses to give credit. But they’re not there and I’ve searched high and low on Google Images to no avail. Frustrating. [Update 23-08-015 – discovered I sourced these images from Rijkstudio!]

I used one of my own backgrounds and combined a texture from Kerstin Frank and from 2 Lil’ Owls. You know what it’s like — you’re about to paste the details of each image in ‘file info’ and then somebody interrupts and it never gets done. I have no idea which of these backgrounds I used. Irritating, to say the least.

Talking of fossils, I recently finished reading Tracy Chevalier’s novel, Remarkable Creatures. If you’ve ever read Chevalier’s work, you will know that she writes about real people with extraordinary skill so that you feel you know something of what they were actually like.  Remarkable Creatures is the tale of two female fossil hunters, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpott, in the early 19th century when women’s status was not what it has become. Fossil hunters? Female? Whatever next! But their discovery of the first dinosaur was to change everything, not that they received any credit at the start.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

If you thought fossils were boring, think again:

‘On a windswept English beach in the early 19th century, two women make discoveries that change the world. And in so doing find friendship, pride — and trouble.’ (Blurb)
Chevalier recently stated that making fossils sexy was one of her chief aims in writing Remarkable Creatures. She has certainly succeeded.’ Daily Telegraph
‘Historical figures have rarely been so cleverly used… A stunning story.’ The Guardian

I recommend the book highly. And if you want to buy the book, click the image above or its title and I’ll earn commission — every little helps! By the way, the same applies to any books or films I add to my posts.

Buy a framed print of Looking for Fossils © Sarah Vernon at my Crated gallery

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 | Sailing to the Moon #Art

Sailing to the Moon © Sarah Vernon — Available on various products @ Fine Art America & Fine Art England

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‘What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.’
Thomas Merton

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The yacht photograph is by Zakhar Kleyman on Flickr, while the texture I have used in a ‘soft light’ blend (Photoshop) is by Kerstin Frank, also from Flickr. I’ve made it sound as if Flickr is a village!

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 | Night Landings

Night Landings © Sarah Vernon [Redbubble]

My current obsession with the sea and the coast continues with Night Landings.

The original photograph is by Tim Mossholder at Unsplash and I have blended it with textures from 2 Lil’ Owls – 2LO Haunting 14 and 2LO Haunting 23.

Soon to be available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Have a beautiful Sunday…

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Sea Breeze and ‘Old Grog’

Sea Breeze © Sarah Vernon

As you might be able to tell, I’ve been playing around with the vintage yacht picture from The Graphics Fairy that I used for Sailing into Harbour.

The sea is in my blood from generations of sailors on my father’s side, including Admiral Edward Vernon, as in the Battle of Portobello (or Porto Bello), Panama, in 1739. The Admiral’s nickname, ‘Old Grog’, was coined because of the coat of ‘grogram’ that he wore, and ‘grog’ then came to mean the watered-down rum he instigated; this was not to stop his sailors getting drunk but to keep the water as fresh as it could be.  He also introduced lemon or lime juice to stave off scurvy. Vernon’s crew were known to be much healthier than others though the link between vitamin C and good health was not proved until later. The practice was later adopted throughout the Royal Navy.

Admiral Edward “Old Grog” Vernon. Portrait by Thomas Gainsborough [Wikipedia]

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | View of a Harbour by Caspar David Friedrich

View of a Harbour – Caspar David Friedrich

This is a quick post, partly because my touchpad is being recalcitrant, to showcase View of a Harbour by Caspar David Friedrich which is new in my vintage store.

Have a lovely weekend.

Take care and keep laughing!

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