There Were Never Such Devoted Pumpkins Binder | Zazzle #Sold

I’m delighted to have sold this binder to follow the matching card I sold the other day.

Source: There Were Never Such Devoted Pumpkins Binder | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card #Sold!

Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card. Personalize any greeting card for no additional cost! Cards are shipped the Next Business Day.

There were never such devoted pumpkins! Fresh pumpkins to make an exquisite pumpkin pie for your Halloween supper. Also suitable for Thanksgiving.

Source: Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card (866786)

Take care and keep laughing!

Halloween, Black Cat, The Haunting, Vintage Theatre card #Sold!

Halloween may be over for another year but it didn’t stop one of my customers from buying this card. Thank you, stranger!

Halloween, Black Cat, The Haunting, Vintage Theatre card. Personalise any greeting card for no additional cost! Cards are shipped the Next Business Day.

Source: Halloween, Black Cat, The Haunting, Vintage Theatre card

Take care and keep laughing!

7 Spooky Tales from England’s Haunted Castles | Heritage Calling

Scotney Castle, Kent

Many of England’s historic buildings and monuments set an inspiring backdrop for mysterious tales of paranormal activity, their rich heritage feeding into narratives passed through generations. Thi…

Source: 7 Spooky Tales from England’s Haunted Castles | Heritage Calling

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! #Halloween #Invitation | Zazzle

Original & vintage art © First Night Design

Source: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! Card | Zazzle

If it’s something you mark, enjoy. It turns out my youngest niece adores Halloween!

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Gravestone Hell #Halloween

FROM THE ARCHIVE 18th October 2014

My own textures and photographs, along with some Photoshop brushes, went into creating this image which, you will not be surprised to learn, is geared for…

Source: First Night Design | Gravestone Hell #Halloween | First Night Design

First Night Design | Halloween Night Card #Sold!

A little early in the year but a sale is a sale is a sale! Halloween Night Greeting Card is an adaptation of a vintage image from Mindy Sommers at Color Bakery

Personalise any greeting card at Greeting Card Universe for no additional cost! Cards are shipped the Next Business Day.

Buy: Halloween Night Greeting Card

Take care and keep laughing!

A Victorian Halloween Party

Snap-Apple Night by Daniel Maclise, 1833

Despite their reputation for straight-laced sobriety, the Victorians celebrated Halloween with great enthusiasm – and often with outright abandon.  Victorian Halloween parties were filled with fun, games, and spooky rituals, some of which still feature at Halloween parties today.  Many of the games had origins in pagan religion or medieval superstition.  Others were merely a means of making merry with one’s friends.  Regardless, Halloween parties of the 19^th century were an occasion for indulging in what author Hugh Miller describes in his 1876 book Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland as:

“….a multitude of wild mischievous games which were tolerated at no other season.”

For an example of a Victorian Halloween party, we need look no further than Queen Victoria herself.  In 1876, the queen, along with Princess Beatrice and the Marchioness of Ely, celebrated Halloween at Balmoral Castle on a grand scale.  Preparations took place for…

Source: A Victorian Halloween Party

First Night Design | Reclining in Comfort #TimeManagement

I wanted to let you know, kind friends and followers, that I am pulling back on my furious pace. There is always a problem with bandwidth and a decent connection in this part of Crete and I’ve now discovered that the worst offender when it comes to eating up gigabytes is not the uploading of my art to the various galleries or downloading free images to work on, as I’d thought, but the visiting of so many blogs to like and comment!

Click to buy Greeting Cards

This is very frustrating as it’s important to me to give as much as I can in the support of others. I always knew I would have to cut the amount of time I was spending on myriad blogs at some point because it leaves me no time or energy to commit to my art which rather makes a nonsense of doing it in the first place! I’ve always tried to keep up with followers who post four or more times a day but oh my, it’s tough and I just can’t do it. Ordinary (and often extraordinary) life has to play a part, including sitting on the sofa eating chocolates and watching Casablanca, Day for Night or the Sharpe series with Sean Bean for the umpteenth time. Very heaven.

Click to buy Paper Napkins

If you’re on Twitter, then you will probably know that @RoundTeam retweets my followers’ tweets. but there will be far less of me tweeting direct from blog posts. I will give priority to those who actively support me here and to those history or theatre-related posts that I plan to re-blog on First Night History or Rogues & Vagabonds.

Click to buy Cushions

As for future blog posts, these may not be every day. And during the next week, I will be spending time updating my Zazzle Design and Zazzle Vintage stores as too many pieces from the last few months are limited to cards, postcards, stamps and posters. I don’t sell every product that Zazzle produces but it takes a lot of time to do even the reduced number.

Click to buy Stickers

And so, I bid you adieux until we meet again. Have a splendid Halloween!

Click to by Postcards

#BLOGSHARELEARN LINKY PARTY OCTOBER 30/15

My work can be bought at the following galleries and on various products:
Redbubble
Crated
First Night Design Zazzle US
First Night Design Zazzle UK
First Night Vintage US
First Night Vintage UK
Fine Art America
Fine Art England
Saatchi Art

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | “I blame Edgar Allan Poe for all this Halloween…”

ONE FROM THE ARCHIVE 15 October 2014

First Night Design

The Cynical Halloween Raven Greeting Cards © Sarah Vernon

Some fun for all us cynics at Halloween. The bird is from The Graphics Fairy and the words are mine own!

And here are few others made in earlier years to choose from.

Halloween: The Final Frontier Greeting Cards

Charming Witch Greeting Cards

Skeleton Questions for Halloween Postcards

The Cynical Halloween Raven Postcards

Related

• The Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Take care and keep laughing!

View original post

First Night Design | Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! #Halloween

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! © Sarah Vernon

It’s astonishing what you can achieve when you don’t know what you want or where you’re heading. Such was the case with Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! I find it difficult — sometimes tiresome — to create for specific occasions or holidays but I thought I ought to try and do a new design for Halloween. I’ve never celebrated it myself but it’s a major holiday in America and increasingly popular in Britain so there’s definitely a market on both sides of the Atlantic.

Halloween Skeleton & Cherub Postcard

Using my Skeleton and Cherub design, I added a background layer of dark brown in Photoshop’s Normal mode. Out came my 2 Lil’ Owls tool box and Beguiling-25 (Multiply) and Beguiling-24 (Pin Light) ultimately proved to be perfect. If I’d set out with the idea of having a glowing light within the skeleton’s rib cage, I doubt I would have managed it. None of this was realised without an endless assortment of try-out blends over several days. Of course!

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! Greeting Card

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! 5×7 Paper Invitation Card

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

A slide show of some of my other Halloween designs

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Halloween @ First Night Design Zazzle US

Halloween @ First Night Design Zazzle UK

Take care and keep laughing!

So I Have a Number of Faults, said the Skeleton #Halloween

FROM THE ARCHIVE 2013.
There are two versions available, one that says ‘What was I – just a number’ and ‘So I have a number of faults!’ The original vintage skeletons are from…

Source: So I Have a Number of Faults, said the Skeleton | First Night Design

First Night Design | Halloween: The Final Frontier

Halloween: The Final Frontier Large Gift Bag

Halloween: The Final Frontier Jumbo Tote Bag

Zazzle tells me that now is the time to promote my products for Halloween. Since I almost never do this with calendar dates in time to make a difference to my sales, I’m continuing with the theme for today’s post. Look away now if you can live without 31st October!

I selected the witch from a vintage image from The Graphics Fairy and then created a black background with stars. I’m rather fond of the result though I say it myself as shouldn’t.

Halloween: The Final Frontier Standard Cocktail Napkin

Halloween: The Final Frontier Small Square Tile

ACT I  SCENE I	A desert place.
[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches]
First Witch	When shall we three meet again
	In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch	When the hurlyburly’s done,
	When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch	That will be ere the set of sun.	5
First Witch	Where the place?
Second Witch	Upon the heath.
Third Witch	There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch	I come, graymalkin!
Second Witch	Paddock calls.	10
Third Witch	Anon!
ALL	Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
	Hover through the fog and filthy air.
[Exeunt]

Halloween: The Final Frontier Address Label

Available at the following galleries:
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Haunting #Halloween

The Haunting © Sarah Vernon at Greeting Card Universe

Just imagine you’re living in the 19th century and want the perfect entertainment for Halloween. You could try The Haunting at the Theatre Royal. But beware the black cat!

Having just sold this Halloween card on Greeting Card Universe, it’s clear that people are already thinking about 31st October and being spooked out by kids trick or treating!

Just in case you were wondering, there was never — to my knowledge — a Victorian play called The Haunting. The image was created with various bits of family ephemera and Photoshop’s design tools, except for the black cat, which came (I think) from The Graphics Fairy.

The Haunting Vinyl Binder at Zazzle

The Haunting 4×9.25 Paper Invitation Cards at Zazzle

The Haunting Courier Bags at Zazzle

Available at the following galleries:
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Spook by James Francis Carlin MacDonnell

Halloween Skeleton & Cherub Cards & Gifts © Sarah Vernon

Ok, so a skeleton is not a scarecrow, as mentioned in the little ditty below, but it’s as close as you’re going to get from me on this ghoul-infested date!

The Spook [1920]

The most horrible sight I ever saw
Was the soul of a scare-crow, gaunt and queer,
Made of Humor, the Shadow of straw
And a foolish notion of Fear.
—by  James Francis Carlin MacDonnell (1881-1944)

From: Carlin, Francis, The Cairn of Stars, 1920, Henry Holt and Company: New York, p. 96.

via From Troubles of the World

May all your frights be little ones!

Take care and keep laughing!