Red Rose Wine Gift Bag | Zazzle

Size: Gift Bag – Wine

Package your presents perfectly with fully personalized gift bags! Design them with favorite photos or messages for any occasion, including birthdays and weddings. These gift bags are made with premium quality paper and printed with vivid ink to make your gift giving truly special.

• Dimensions: 4.75” l x 4” w x 13” h
• Perfect size for a wine bottle
• Made with premium quality paper for extra durability
• Choice of matte or glossy finish
• Available in 3 additional sizes

Source: Red Rose Wine Gift Bag | Zazzle

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First Night Design | Music in the Home Greeting Card

Music in the Home Greeting Card © Sarah Vernon @ First Night Design

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First Night Design | A Burgundy Rose in Snow #Art

Thank you all so much for commenting on my Rose in Snow post and giving me the confidence to upload the piece to my galleries. I made one change, which was to ensure the rose itself covered the whole area so that no background green is showing. I like it better this way.

A Burgundy Rose in Snow Flask by FirstNightDesign

A Burgundy Rose in Snow Throw Pillow by FirstNightDesign

A Burgundy Rose in Snow Card by FirstNightDesign

A Burgundy Rose in Snow Postage 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 | A Rose in Snow #Art

Since the above isn’t the kind of work I normally do, I’m not at all sure whether the image is effective. It’s part of a photograph of a rose I took a few days ago. It wasn’t actually snowing — I was inside — but I ‘painted’ it in Corel Painter and purposely left the specks of white as if there had been a gentle sprinkling of snow…or does it look like dandruff? I finished it off with a texture by Kerstin Frank. Does it have any appeal?

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“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

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First Night Design | The Sick Rose by William Blake #Repost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 23rd April 2013

I have used a rose from The Graphics Fairy and a background from Kerstin Frank to create an image for William Blake’s poem, The Sick Rose. Blake, of c…

Source: The Sick Rose by William Blake | First Night Design

Eleanor Roosevelt says: | The Müscleheaded Blog

“Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to later read the description in the catalogue: “No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”

Source: Eleanor Roosevelt says: | The Müscleheaded Blog

Yellow Illustrates Happiness #Repost

Roses are Golden by FirstNightDesign

FROM THE ARCHIVE 14th May 2013

A quick post to show some of my latest tinkering!  This image was created with vintage flowers from The Graphics Fairy and my own backgrounds and textures. I do…

Source: Yellow Illustrates Happiness

Valley Rose: Playing with Flowers #Repost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 30th September 2013

I confess I get increasingly sick of flower photographs — not paintings, whether digital, acrylic or oil — just photographs.  Rarely do I find them exceptional and yet even the mundane sell in thei…

Source: Valley Rose: Playing with Flowers

First Night Design | ‘Love is not love which alters when…’

Love is Not Love… Card

Love is Not Love… Card

Love is Not Love… Cards

Shakespeare sonnet 116: ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove’.

All Valentine products
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK

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First Night Design | Perfect for Cucumber Sandwiches

Valley Rose Serving Trays

Day at the Exhibition Serving Trays

Femme Fatale in Sepia Serving Trays

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First Night Design | ‘I would like my roses to see you’

Red Rose © Sarah Vernon [Crated]

As it’s been a while since I’ve shown the layers that go into creating a particular image, I thought I’d give you the three pieces that make up Red Rose.

I started with the back of a vintage advertising card from The Old Design Shop.

But no matter what I tried, it would not gel with this rose from The Graphics Fairy.

I discarded it and went in search of a background with reddish tones from 2 Lil’ Owls’ Effervescent collection and decided upon this number.

The effect created by blending the rose in ‘multiply’ mode over the top was very pleasing but there was something missing.

I searched through 2 Lil’ Owls‘ French Brocante collection and my first choice proved the perfect addition when blended in ‘colour burn’ mode and sandwiched between the rose and the ‘effervescent’ background.

Et voilà!

As I’ve often said, there’s many a tweak and a twist in the process before I’m happy but if you are expecting me to write it all out in this post, you’ve got another think coming! As Shirley Conran so memorably once said, life’s too short to stuff a mushroom, and it’s certainly too short to detail each tweak. Pay me and I might!

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‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.’
Oscar Levant

‘Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.’
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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First Night Design | Café Royal Rose

Cafe Royal Rose © First Night Design

I took a photograph of this yellow rose some months ago and have played with it ever since to little effect. Until, that is, someone posted a link on Facebook — in the Texture Artists group — to the British artist Sarah Gardner who also sells beautiful textures. Registering with her site gives you a free download of four textures. I added the one pictured below and I was off and running!

ARTISAN Ink by Sarah Gardner

The typography elements are from a vintage advert for the Café Royal in London’s Regent Street from one of my theatre periodicals dated  late 19th and early 20th century, Play Pictorial.

Café Royal, Regent Street

Related articles

• Café Royal Regent Street (official site)
• Café Royal (Wikipedia)

Take care and keep laughing!

Valley Rose: Playing with Flowers

Valley Rose © First Night Design

I confess I get increasingly sick of flower photographs — not paintings, whether digital, acrylic or oil — just photographs.  Rarely do I find them exceptional and yet even the mundane sell in their thousands, if not millions.  I do take photographs of flowers but I cannot leave them be.  I have to play around with them, always wishing to create something painterly, something out of the ordinary.  Whether I have managed to achieve such in my latest artwork, only you can tell me by commenting below! Having said that, this piece does not use one of my flower photographs but a free vintage postcard with a rose and lily of the valley from The Graphics Fairy.

Creating the background involved so many photographs from my collection that this post would be the length of a book if I included them all and the different stages it required in Photoshop to produce it, not forgetting my tweaks and blends. I do hope you like it.

Linking to Brag Monday.

Valley Rose on Zazzle.

Valley Rose on RedBubble.

Valley Rose on Fine Art America.

Valley Rose on Saatchi Online.

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Yellow Illustrates Happiness

Roses are Golden by FirstNightDesign

A quick post to show some of my latest tinkering!  This image was created with vintage flowers from The Graphics Fairy and my own backgrounds and textures. I do love creating an image with rich, golden yellows.  As colour genius Karen Haller says, it’s the colour of happiness.  ‘Yellow can boost your self-esteem and self-confidence, leaving you feeling full of optimism and positivity.’  It certainly does that for me, Karen.

Linking to Brag Monday at The Graphics Fairy

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The Sick Rose by William Blake

O Rose Thou Art Sick by FirstNightDesign

I have used a rose from The Graphics Fairy and a background from Kerstin Frank to create an image for William Blake’s poem, The Sick Rose. Blake, of course, did his own illuminated border and illustration, which is rather different to my interpretation, as you can see below.

The Sick Rose by William Blake

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

William Blake’s The Sick Rose c1896 © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge [credit: Wikipedia]

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Related articles

• Quote for Today: William Blake (synkroniciti.com)