“Abandoned Hideaway” Greeting Cards by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble #Sold!

Features / PixElations 29 June 2016 / I’m delighted with the effect of a Kerstin Frank texture on my photograph of a run-down shed in my friend’s garden! (Photoshop) • Also buy this artwork on stationery, apparel, stickers, and more.

Source: “Abandoned Hideaway” Greeting Cards by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble

Take care and keep laughing!

“The Cuckoo’s Note” Laptop Skins by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble #Gifts

Features / Art Universe 2 September 2015 / Creation 2 August 2015 / Crosses, Crafts & Collectibles 2 August 2015 / Everyday Women 30 July 2015. / Creation 26 July 2015. / Layered Up 27 July 2015. / Photoshop / Cuckoo: Biodiversity Library on Flickr. / Own textures. • Also buy this artwork on laptop covers, apparel, stickers, and more.

Source: “The Cuckoo’s Note” Laptop Skins by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble

Take care and keep laughing!

The Cuckoo’s Note Wristwatch | Zazzle #Sold!

My delight knows no bounds!

Style: Women’s Perfect Square Black Leather Strap Watch

With a style that is feminine and chic, the Women’s Perfect Square Leather watch features a gorgeous leather band and a fully customizable face for the most unique timepiece you’ll ever own.

• Women’s wrist watch
• Material:
  • Face: Alloy
  • Strap: Leather
• Dimensions:
  • Face: 0.944″diameter
  • Strap: 8.86″ x 0.7″
  • Case: 1.25″diameter
  • Weight: 0.107lb
• 3-hand analog Japan Quartz®
• Full color custom printing on face
• Buckle closure
• Shower proof only
• 1 year manufacturers limited warranty
• Battery included
• This product is recommended for ages 13+

Source: The Cuckoo’s Note Wristwatch | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

Scent Of Pines Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

Scent Of Pines Tote Bag by Sarah Vernon. The tote bag is machine washable, available in three different sizes, and includes a black strap for easy carrying on your shoulder. All totes are available for worldwide shipping and include a money-back guarantee.

Source: Scent Of Pines Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

First Night Design | Mallards And Swan Collage #Art Revisited

Mallards And Swan Collage Framed Print at Fine Art America © Sarah Vernon

 

Mallards and Swan Collage Mobile Cases at Fine Art America © Sarah Vernon

Originally created in May 2014, this collage uses a vintage handwritten image from Wikimedia. The mallards, swan, and the butterflies hovering around some flowers, are all from The Graphics Fairy.

Mallards and Swan Collage Wrapping Paper by FirstNightDesign

Mallards and Swan Collage Round Clock by FirstNightDesign

Mallards and Swan Collage Letterhead by FirstNightDesign

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Abandoned Hideaway #Art #HomeDecor

Abandoned Hideaway © Sarah Vernon at Fine Art America

I’m delighted with the effect of a Kerstin Frank texture on my photograph of a run-down shed in my friend’s garden!

Abandoned Hideaway Card by FirstNightDesign

Abandoned Hideaway Throw Pillow by FirstNightDesign

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Magnificent Mongrel #Photography

The Magnificent Mongrel © Sarah Vernon

This is a photograph of our own magnificent mongrel, a cross between a Terrier and a Jack Russell (we think). I have processed the image in Photoshop by adding a texture from The Graphics Fairy in order to bring out the vibrance of his fur coat and the colour of the grass, although that vibrance is missing in the screenshot of the spiral notebook below.

I never thought it was possible to love an animal as much as I love Pisch. Yes, that’s his name and before you all start to comment on what it means in German, let me explain that it came about when he was rescued by a friend of ours who wanted to find a home for him. “What do you call him?” I asked. “Pisch,” said our friend. He went on to say, “As in the noise you make to get a cat to go away.” So there you have it. He’s seven years old and I want him to live forever!

The Magnificent Mongrel © Sarah Vernon

I probably wouldn’t have put him up for sale, so to speak, had it not been for a Cats & Dogs Challenge at the Art Universe group on Redbubble. I’m still not sure about uploading it to the other galleries. I would have turned him into a digital painting if my GMX-PhotoPainter software was working. But it ain’t!

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‘Yes, he’s got all them different kinds of thoroughbred blood in him, and he’s got other kinds you ain’t mentioned and that you ain’t slick enough to see.’ – Don Marquis

♦

‘He wa’n’t no common dog, he wa’n’t no mongrel; he was a composite. A composite dog is a dog that is made up of all the valuable qualities that’s in the dog breed—kind of a syndicate; and a mongrel is made up of all riffraff that’s left over.’ – Mark Twain

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Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Eel Fisher’s Hut #Abstract #Art

The Eel Fisher’s Hut © Sarah Vernon @ Redbubble

Abstract created in Photoshop with a couple of textures from 2 Lil’ Owls and a photochrom colour print from Wikimedia of an eel fisher’s hut on the Bore (Bure River) England, between 1890 and 1900.

It’s something a little different from my usual work. It was adding the textures from 2 Lil’ Owls that completely changed my original idea — yes, I had one in mind for once. I added one texture in Normal mode and overlaid it with another in Colour Burn before setting the original photograph to Soft Light. The resulting fire damage effect was far too appealing to me to let it go.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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 | Scent of Pines #Art #Gifts

Buy prints of Scent of Pines © Sarah Vernon from Crated

I have combined a beautiful landscape photograph by Ales Krivec at Unsplash with two textures from 2 Lil’ Owls, one in Photoshop’s Normal mode, the other in Linear Burn. The photo is the top layer and in Multiply mode.

© Ales Krivec

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“…freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin – inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night…”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

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Scent of Pines Pack Of Gift Tags

Scent of Pines Greeting Card

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“I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer — and what trees and seasons smelled like — how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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Scent of Pines Food Trays

Scent of Pines Bicycle Playing Cards

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 | Postcard Lemons Business Cards

Postcard Lemons Business Cards

Postcard Lemons has always been one of my favourites from the early days and I’m delighted to say that I have just sold a pack of the business cards on Zazzle.

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“When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.”
― Cathy Guisewite

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“We live in a world where lemonade is made from aritificial flavoring and furniture polish is made from real lemons.”
― MAD Magazine

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

Have a beautiful and creative Tuesday!

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Cuckoo’s Note #Art

The Cuckoo Calls © Sarah Vernon

I’m on a roll with the divine vintage illustrations stored at The Biodiversity Heritage Library on Flickr, as per my Pheasant post. This cuckoo, to which I’ve added the same background textures, also comes from the ornithological publication of 1849 mentioned in that post.

‘They frequent tropical lowland evergreen forest and tropical deciduous forest according to the species. They are usually found in wooded and forested areas such as gallery forest, secondary forest, open or scrubby woodland, shrubby pastures or with scattered trees.

They may be found in humid areas, mangroves, swamps, humid woodland edges, forest with seasonal flooding, low thickets and dense shrub near water.’ [oiseaux-birds.com]

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The Attic warbler pours her throat
Responsive to the cuckoo’s note.
Thomas Gray—Ode on the Spring.

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“In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man

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I’ll let you know as soon as The Cuckoo’s Note is for sale.

Take care and keep laughing!

Little Bo Peep … A Cautionary Tale

Still no connection so one from the archive.

First Night Design

Little Bo Peep illustrated by Walter Crane 1885 [Wikipedia]

Well now, boys and girls, are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time, there was a little English shepherdess who lost all her sheep.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
And doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they’ll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo Peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them bleating,
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were all still fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook
Determined for to find them.
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo Peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh, and…

View original post 553 more words

First Night Design | The Birds, The Birds!

Mallards and Swan Collage © First Night Design

Any followers who have visited my new blog, First Night History, will doubtless have known that sooner or later I would create a piece that used the handwritten header image for the blog, which I found on Wikimedia.

And so I have! The mallards, swan, and the butterflies hovering around some flowers, are all from The Graphics Fairy.

Enjoy! And let’s protect all our birds, particularly the eggs and nests of such as English robins and starlings since Natural England has proposed that their destruction be allowed without special licence. See Tom Pride’s blog post listed below.

Related

• The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
• Here’s the real reason the Tories are allowing the destruction of robin eggs and nests

Take care and keep laughing!

Little Bo Peep … A Cautionary Tale

Little Bo Peep illustrated by Walter Crane 1885 [Wikipedia]

Well now, boys and girls, are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time, there was a little English shepherdess who lost all her sheep.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
And doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they’ll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo Peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them bleating,
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were all still fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook
Determined for to find them.
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo Peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh, and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks went rambling,
And tried what she could,
As a shepherdess should,
To tack again each to its lambkin.

If you imagine the tale ends there, oh, my dears, think again!

The Lady of the Manor, Evangelina, is trying to help Little Bo Peep and goes searching far and wide across her husband’s estate, humming a tuneless little ditty to herself.  Evangelina is tone-deaf, a failing her husband tries to ignore when she attempts to entertain guests at one of their sumptuous parties.

“Oh, how charming,” exclaims Evangelina on discovering one of the rams beside her favourite tree. “Come here, my little thing. I wish to stroke you,” she says, pointing a finger at him in an imperious manner.

The ram, Josiah, is feeling miserable for he has had a frustrating morning trying to persuade his sweetheart, Minty, to give him the attention he thinks he deserves. ‘I’m not your little thing,’ he thinks, glaring at Evangelina. ‘I belong to Bo Peep, if anyone, and I very much want to belong to Minty.  So there.’

His mood is not helped by this stranger standing in his shadow and he snaps. Launching himself at her, he follows his head butt with a bite of her thumb.

The word that explodes from Evangelina’s lips has hitherto only been uttered by the workers in the meadows on whom she has so often spied, intrigued and excited by the shape of their bodies and the curve of their muscles, of which her husband has none.

It is not until after Little Bo Peep has found the tails and replaced them on her lambkins, that the Lady of the Manor is found by one Snotty Smethwick, a cow-hand on the estate.  He carries her almost lifeless body to the main house where the housekeeper takes it upon herself to tend to her mistress.  Little Bo Peep is called upon to mix up one of her refreshing potions to revive Evangelina.

It is too late. That evening, the Lady of the Manor succumbs to the Hereafter.

There is much weeping and wailing on the estate. A lavish funeral takes place, after which life goes on much as it always has.  Except for one thing.

The Lord of the Manor falls in love with Little Bo Peep and marries her.  Their happiness is short-lived.  Snotty Smethwick, who was secretly in love with the Lady of the Manor, is highly suspicious and decides that the ram is not to blame, rather that Little Bo Peep’s potion had been laced with poison.

One thing leads to another until the new Lady of the Manor is charged with murder and imprisoned at Newgate.

Little Bo Peep dies of heartbreak and starvation.

Some say it was the housekeeper who did the dirty deed. Only Josiah knew the truth for he died not long after of a nasty disease and was mourned by Minty alone, and extravagantly at that.

© Sarah Vernon

Ingredients for Pastoral Lady

Ackermann’s Repository Scenic Background – EKDuncan

Antique Tree Image – The Graphics Fairy

Sheep Image Vintage – The Graphics Fairy

Georgian Lady – Vintage Stock Art

The Result

Pastoral Lady © First Night Design

Ram and tree: The Graphics Fairy
Georgian lady: Vintage Stock Art
Background: EKDuncan @ Deviant Art

Take care and keep laughing!