Give Thanks Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

Give Thanks 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: Give Thanks Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | “I have a gift for enraging people…” #Art #Gifts

Lulu in Hollywood Card by FirstNightDesign

Lulu in Hollywood © Sarah Vernon at Saatchi Art

Reposting the incomparable Tallulah yesterday gave me a taste for creating another of my Hollywood images à la Edward Steichen. I found an image of silent film star Louise Brooks from Hello-Tuesday and used the vintage wallpaper from MGB Stock that I’ve used previously (DeviantArt). It is, I believe, a still from Pandora’s Box (1929) — ‘The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naïve young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.’ This time, however, I have done it slightly differently and given her a background of the wallpaper in its original form. The effect of this can be better seen if you click on Saatchi Art or  Fine Art America.

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“I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.”
― Louise Brooks

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Lulu in Hollywood Throw Pillow by FirstNightDesign

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“I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept anything without wishing I had given it away.”
— Louise Brooks

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Lulu in Hollywood Wrist Watches 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 Life I’ve Imagined

A Cote de la Mer © Sarah Vernon @ Crated

If you read my blog regularly, you can probably guess my thoughts this Bank Holiday!

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“It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.” ― Henry James

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas Crete anymore.” ― L. Frank Baum

“In the long run, the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.” — Daniel L. Reardon

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
(Little Gidding) ―  T.S. Eliot

“Sometimes losing everything is the only way to begin.”  (The Firebrand Legacy)
― T.K. Kiser

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Sports Pavilion #Art

The Sports Pavilion © Sarah Vernon at Crated

The Sports Pavilion uses a photograph from a store called Clark Street Mercantile who have added what I assume to be their brochure photographs to that great free resource, Unsplash.

In the first instance I used Topaz Impressions’ chiaroscuro effect but I wanted something else. To this end I added 2LO Texture Artists 2 in the Multiply mode and enhanced the brightness and contrast. The image now appears to be a charmingly aged print of an old sports pavilion from, say, the 1920s or ’30s. Well, I like to think so!

The Sports Pavilion Tote Bags © Sarah Vernon at FAA

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Pre-Raphaelite Beauty #Art

Pre-Raphaelite Beauty © Sarah Vernon – Fine Art America

This adaptation of an autochrome photograph from Wikimedia by Robert Demachy (1859-1936), which was taken some time between 1907 and 1915, took a great deal of work to get just right.

Female nude draped in a blue veil, autochrome by Robert Demachy

The original image is enchanting but as soon as I saw it, I wanted to turn it into a painting with a hint of the Pre-Raphaelites about it — yes, one of those rare occasions when I knew what I desired and didn’t wait for one of my ‘accidents’!

I used various textures to give it colour and texture before using a detail of the clock from this image to create the top right-hand detail. I duplicated this detail and warped and shaped it to create an art nouveau pattern for the drape. I also removed her left arm as it looked slightly odd!

Pre-Raphaelite Beauty Mugs © Sarah Vernon

I had to think carefully when uploading it to my galleries as a lot of the groups (such as on Redbubble) don’t accept nudity. I had to tick boxes about ‘mature content’. I’m not sure I’ll do another nude any time soon!

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Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also call’d No-more, Too-late, Farewell — Dante Gabriel Rossetti, (The House of Life: 97. A Superscription, 1-2)

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Not as she is, but as she fills his dream — Christina Rossetti, In An Artist’s Studio

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The term ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ is in danger of becoming one of the most misused tags in art history — Christopher Wood, Author of The Pre-Raphaelites

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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 | Margate Translated #Art

Welcome to Margate … translated.

Buy Margate Translated © Sarah Vernon at Crated

Margate in Kent, a popular seaside resort since the 18th century, is possibly best known these days as the town where artist Tracy Emin grew up. But did you know that it was home to J.M.W. Turner?

“Where therefore, and in this very town of Margate, [Turner] lived, when he chose to be quit of London, and yet not to travel” John Ruskin

Although I wasn’t thinking of Turner when I discovered this photograph of Margate and its harbour dated 1897 (Wikimedia), I might have been ‘channelling’ him!

“Mrs Booth”, sculpture by Ann Carrington, Stone Pier, Margate [Wikimedia]

The Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate writes that ‘Turner’s connection with Margate was the founding inspiration for our organisation. He loved Margate for the sea, the skies, and his landlady Mrs Booth.’ Don’t you just love it that he was potty about his landlady!

Visit Thanet gives some interesting snippets about Margate:

• In the 1700s, bathing in the sea and drinking seawater became a fashionable cure for all sorts of diseases. From the Georgian period onwards visitors from London began flocking to resorts like Margate for the seawater cure and increasingly as a place to socialise. Margate has built a reputation as a place for bathing in the sea – both for health and pleasure.
• Margate has a special place in the history of the ‘Bathing Machine’ with Benjamin Beale inventing the modest hood in 1753. This canvas canopy could be lowered and raised by the driver of the machine, allowing bathers a modicum of privacy as well as some protection from wind and waves.
  

  A man opening the door of a woman’s bathing machine. [Wikimedia]

• Whilst in Margate recuperating from a nervous breakdown, TS Eliot sat at the Grade II listed shelter on Margate seafront and composed the key lines in his poem ’The Waste Land’ – “On Margate Sands./I can connect/Nothing with nothing./The broken fingernails of dirty hands./My people humble people who expect/Nothing”.
• Margate, was the first place to offer and popularise donkey rides on the beach, starting back in the early 1800s.

So now you know!

Margate Translated Tote Bag from Fine Art America

Buy Margate Translated Cushion from Fine Art England

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 | A Côté de la Mer or a Jolly Time was had by All!

FROM THE ARCHIVE March 2015.
This is an adaptation of an old photochrom postcard circa 1895 from Wikimedia showing the beach at Ostend, Belgium. I have used textures from 2 Lil’ Owls to age it further, along with a French document, also from 2 Lil’ Owls, to add ‘a little something extra’…

Source: First Night Design | A Côté de la Mer or a Jolly Time was had by All!

First Night Design | Heavens to Betsy—25 Sold #Thanksgiving

Buy Give Thanks Postcards from Zazzle © Sarah Vernon

Heavens to Betsy! My weekend has been totally transformed by an email from Zazzle telling me I’ve sold 25 of these Give Thanks Postcards.

The main image is a photograph of our garden – they’re actually Cretan olive trees in the background – and a couple of textures. I’ve used Photoshop to create a Thanksgiving scene with a pumpkin from The Graphics Fairy and an open book from The Cottage Market.

Buy Give Thanks Business Cards © Sarah Vernon

Are you wondering about the phrase ‘Heavens to Betsy’? I have to acknowledge that it’s one of my favourite sayings. I learn, however, that it’s fallen out of use and considered far too anachronistic. Tough. I shall never stop using it. It seems it originated in America in the late 19th century. No one knows who Betsy was and the etymologist Charles Earle Funk said the origins of the phrase were ‘completely unsolvable’. [#1]

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first written use as from a short-story collection by Rose Terry Cooke, Huckleberries Gathered From New England Hills published in 1892. [#1; #2]

I’m also very fond of ‘Heavens to Murgatroyd!’ but I’ll leave that lovely for another day.

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Theatrical Attitude #Art

Theatrical Attitude © Sarah Vernon

This enchantress  was the famous late 19th and early 20th century actress and singer Miss Marie Tempest [1864-1942], who is referred to in the description on the back of my original print as ‘the prima donna of the English stage’ and possessing ‘a very beautiful voice which has had the training it deserves’.

I imagined a faded portrait in a frame that has suffered neglect and fire damage with a hint of gold breaking through. Naturally, I imagined no such thing but this is what came out when I faffed around in Photoshop with a couple of textures from 2 Lil’ Owls: 2LO Confetti 6 (Normal), 2LO – Crackle 11 (Multiply).

Theatrical aficionados might be interested to learn that the actress was the original Judith Bliss in Noël Coward’s Hay Fever. She was made a Dame in  1937.

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“Hitler has taken nearly everything from me but my life, but you can’t live on regret. You’ve got to live for the present and future, not the past.”
She was forced to sell her art collection after losing her home in a German air raid during WWII. IMDb

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Bride Beautiful #Vintage #Photography

The Bride Beautiful © Sarah Vernon

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“Dead people are easy to love. It’s the living ones who are hard.”
― Laurence Overmire

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This late Victorian beauty in her exquisite wedding gown is an ancestor. At least, I have assumed she’s part of my family. Unframed, she was among my father’s possessions when I was sorting everything out after he died in 1997. Was she a Vernon marrying someone else? Was she another lady marrying into the Vernon family.  She lay among a pile of other—recognisable—family photographs but I had never seen her before. There is nothing written on the back and it is too late to ask him about her identity. I have wondered ever since, a wondering that may well lead to a work of fiction!

It could be, of course, that she is from my mother’s (Hoskyns) side of the family and became accidentally mixed up with my father’s photographs. Her eyebrows suggest she’s a Hoskyns. Alas, I will never know.

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“You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

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There was little restoration needed: I have merely brushed out the imperfections and made the sepia tones a little more vibrant. I almost adapted her in my usual way but when I added a French Brocante document as a faint background, Mr FND said, ’No!’ He was quite right.

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“No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

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I did do a Google search in case the lady was a known person but all it came up with was ‘Best guess for this image: Lord Tweedmouth‘, which made me hoot with laughter.

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Don’t look now but here comes another Lighthouse #Art

Decaying Light © Sarah Vernon

After the success of Scorched Earth both here and in my galleries, I couldn’t resist trying the same process with the 2 Lil’ Owls texture—2LO Distressed 21—on my Chania lighthouse photograph. However, instead of Photoshop’s Overlay mode, I used Soft Light. I tweaked the tones of both the photograph and the texture so that the overall effect had more red than in Scorched Earth, or a Titian tone as I like to call it: such a lovely word.

Regular readers will know I do a lot of tweaking but I haven’t mentioned it for a while. I’m saying this just in case you experiment with the same processes I describe using similar photos or textures and discover you end up with something that doesn’t come close! For exact descriptions of what you can achieve in Photoshop, do visit Syd at DigitalLady. I don’t like to give away all my secrets!

I dedicate this post to the friends who commented on The Magic Lighthouse by saying how fond they were of lighthouses, a passion I share, as I think you may have guessed. Do visit these lovely blogs, all very different to each other. In no particular order I give you:

Beetley Pete
Yesterday After
Just Olga
Aquileana
Living with Batman

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Pier into the Depths

Pier into the Depths © Sarah Vernon [Buy at Crated]

I’m putting my cards on the table to tell you I’m in love with my latest piece, a burnt-out pier! I keep looking at it in Photoshop and giving a contented sigh or two! And this I say coming straight from a conversation with Vanessa Couchman about the difficulty of promoting your own work after an upbringing which taught us never to put ourselves forward or show off — if anything, we were directed to show off the work of others. “I don’t think it gets any more comfortable but one becomes more proficient at it,” said Vanessa. She’s right. It’s something we have to do on social media if we are to get any attention. That said, I’m not feeling remotely uncomfortable telling you of my love on this occasion; I wonder why.

I began with this photograph by Victoria Alexander at Unsplash (loving this site of free, high-resolution photographs, if you hadn’t already guessed).

Victoria Alexander

I used one texture — 2LO Distressed 11 from Denise Love at 2 Lil’ Owls, bought via Design Cuts – and another from Lenabem-Anna J. on Flickr.

2LO Distressed 11

Lenabem-Anna-J

There followed a great deal of blending and stretching and tweaking before it was done.

Pier into the Depths Greeting Card

I hope you like it too. If you do, as Olga Núñez Miret says at the foot of her posts, you know what to do — like, comment and share!

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 | Adam’s Apples

Adam’s Apples © Sarah Vernon

Vintage apples from The Graphics Fairy and textures from 2 Lil’ Owls. I haven’t uploaded it for sale yet but I thought you might like it, particularly Mary of Oil Pastels for Mary as we were talking about doing something like Copper Pear. I told her I could never repeat a particular kind of beauty!

Do you think I need to make the apples greener? I’ve been farting about with it forever and I’m still not sure.

Soon to be 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 | A Côté de la Mer or a Jolly Time was had by All!

A Côté de la Mer Hip Flask

This is an adaptation of an old photochrom postcard circa 1895 from Wikimedia showing the beach at Ostend, Belgium. I have used textures from 2 Lil’ Owls to age it further, along with a French document, also from 2 Lil’ Owls, to add ‘a little something extra’.

A Côté de la Mer Throw Pillows

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‘A beach is not only a sweep of sand, but shells of sea creatures, the sea glass, the seaweed, the incongruous objects washed up by the ocean.’
Henry Grunwald

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A Côté de la Mer Greeting Cards

Buy a poster of A Côte de la Mer © Sarah Vernon at Crated

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“…vicinity to the sea is desirable, because it is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else, and because bathing and basking on the shore cannot be considered an employment but only an apotheosis of loafing. (“Expiation”)”
― E.F. Benson, The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | “I’ve never considered myself a femme fatale…”

Femme Fatale in Sepia (US) by FirstNightDesign

Femme Fatale in Sepia (UK) by FirstNightDesign

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“I’ve never considered myself a femme fatale as I’ve never seduced anyone and ruined their lives. At least as far as I know.”
― Scarlett Johansson

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Take care and keep laughing!