Curious Kittens Weekender Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

Curious Kittens Weekender Tote Bag (24″ x 16″) by Sarah Vernon. The tote bag is machine washable and includes cotton rope handle for easy carrying on your shoulder. All totes are available for worldwide shipping and include a money-back guarantee.

Source: Curious Kittens Weekender Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

Take care and keep laughing!

A Bountiful Thanksgiving Weekender Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

A Bountiful Thanksgiving Weekender Tote Bag (24″ x 16″) by Sarah Vernon. The tote bag is machine washable and includes cotton rope handle for easy carrying on your shoulder. All totes are available for worldwide shipping and include a money-back guarantee.

Source: A Bountiful Thanksgiving Weekender Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

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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

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Contemplation Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

Contemplation 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: Contemplation Tote Bag for Sale by Sarah Vernon

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First Night Design | Vogue Goes Live! #Art

Extreme Vogue © Sarah Vernon at Crated

Extreme Vogue © Sarah Vernon Tote Bag at Fine Art America

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

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First Night Design | The Lookout #Art #Repost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 14th March 2014

Photograph by Fré Sonneveld from Unsplash. Textures 2 Lil’ Owls.

Dover Beach — Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the Fr…

Source: First Night Design | The Lookout | First Night Design

First Night Design | “Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and…” #Repost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 13th November 2014

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out-of-doors by somebody I do not know.” ― John Keats Let joy be unconfined! I have sold a cushion at Redbubble with the V…

Source: First Night Design | “Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and…” | First Night Design

First Night Design | Nijinsky dans La Peri — Ballets Russes #Vintage

Nijinsky dans La Peri – Ballets Russes Tote Bag from Fine Art America © Sarah Vernon

Nijinsky dans La Peri — Ballets Russes Greeting Card by FirstNightVintage

Now here’s a vintage ballet theatre programme illustrated by Léon Bakst that I haven’t played with! I bought it from Mindy Sommers at Vintage Stock Art and gave it a soupçon of restorative magic so that you can buy it as a greeting card, postcard, print or US stamp in the Theatre & Film section of First Night Vintage. You will also find many other products with the image at Fine Art America & England (see links below).

Nijinsky dans La Peri — Ballets Russes Postcard by FirstNightVintage

Nijinsky circa 1912 [Wikimedia]

The incomparable Vaslev Nijinsky (1890-1950) was so famous a dancer with Sergei Diaghilev’s (1872–1929) Les Ballets Russes that he, along with Diaghilev, was one of the few people known the world over by surname alone; both are inextricably linked with early 20th century arts. Nijinsky went on to choreograph Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’un faune (1912) and Stravinsky’s (1882–1971) The Rite of Spring (1913), which impresario Diaghilev produced. Ballets Russes was founded by the latter in 1909 and Stravinsky was not the only composer to be commissioned. Also included were Satie (1866–1925) and Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), while there were sets designed by Picasso (1881–1973) and Jean Cocteau (1889–1963). Names to conjure with indeed. Add fellow dancers, Michael Fokine (1880–1942), Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) and George Balanchine (1904–83), and you can see why the company was so instrumental in reviving ballet as an art form.

If you like this, as they say at many online stores and give you examples you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, you might also like Schéhérazade.

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Love is Not Love… Tote Bag #Valentine

Love is Not Love… Tote Bag © Sarah Vernon

A very quick post to tell you I’m back! Yesterday was exhausting as I waded through thousands of emails. To say I’ll catch up with your posts from the last few days would be extremely stupid as I know from experience that it just ain’t gonna happen. But I hope to start afresh today.

SONNET 116

[The italics denote which part of the sonnet is quoted on the bag.]

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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:
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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 | Darling Clementines #Christmas

This a Christmas design from 2008. Have a glorious week!

Buy Greeting Cards

Buy Gift Tags

Buy Heart-shaped Stickers

Buy Paper Napkins

Buy Spiral Notebooks

Buy Stamps

Buy Tote Bags

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 | ‘Such Serviceable Flowers’ #Art

Buy print ’Such Serviceable Flowers’ © Sarah Vernon from Redbubble

The title is a quote from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark in which the inimitable Morningside teacher of impressionable girls is talking about carnations. These vintage flowers—at least, I think they’re carnations—are from Mindy Somers of Vintage Art Downloads, a treasure chest of high-resolution images for artists. The underlay is one of my watercolour textures in pale magenta and green.

Buy Tote Bag from Fine Art America © Sarah Vernon

Below is a snippet from the film version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) with Maggie Smith as Brodie and Celia Johnson as the headmistress, Miss Mackay. Incidentally, Dame Celia and I went to the same boarding school…though not at the same time. Obviously.

Such Serviceable Flowers Greeting Card

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 | Emerald Arches #Art

Emerald Arches © Sarah Vernon

Emerald Arches came about when I was playing around with a makeover for Stephen King’s novel Green Mile. One particular blending of an image and a background, the former discarded as far as Green Mile was concerned, shrieked at me to be recreated as my next art piece. The photograph is a painting from 1842 by Jules Victor Genisson on Wikimedia  of the interior of Amiens Cathedral.  Blending it in ‘overlay’ mode via Photoshop with 2 Lil’ Owls texture 2LO Distressed 7 made my heart leap!

I wanted to bring out the edges as if the original had been an architectural drawing with a colour wash. This I achieved by adjusting the brightness and contrast and sharpening the edges until I was satisfied. I could have used Photoshop’s rendering tool on a duplicate layer but this is never satisfactory as it always looks unnatural and manufactured rather than actually drawn by hand.

Amiens

Like so many towns in Northern France, Amiens is, for me, inextricably linked with The Great War. The Battle of Amiens — also known as the Third Battle of Picardy — took place ninety-seven years ago this month and was the one  that would eventually lead to Germany signing the Armistice. The town also suffered during the Second World War and was occupied several times by both the Allies and the Axis powers. Perhaps if I had ever visited Amiens, I would associate it with something else, not least the 13th century cathedral — a World Heritage site — which is clearly an exquisite example of Gothic architecture, and the town’s renowned macaroons.

Gare du Nord (old postcard published by Caron No. 328, postmarked in 1909).

Emerald Arches Greeting Card

Emerald Arches Duvet Cover © Sarah Vernon

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 | The Lookout

The Lookout © Sarah Vernon Buy at Crated

Photograph by Fré Sonneveld from Unsplash.
Textures 2 Lil’ Owls.

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Dover Beach — Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

The sea is calm tonight. 

The tide is full, the moon lies fair 

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light 

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 

Only, from the long line of spray 

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, 

Listen! you hear the grating roar 

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 

At their return, up the high strand, 

Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 

The eternal note of sadness in. 

Sophocles long ago 

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought 

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 

Of human misery; we 

Find also in the sound a thought, 

Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

 

The Sea of Faith 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore 

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 

But now I only hear 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating, to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 

And naked shingles of the world. 

 

Ah, love, let us be true 

To one another! for the world, which seems 

To lie before us like a land of dreams, 

So various, so beautiful, so new, 

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

---

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

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Oriental Glimpse

THE GOOD NEWS: my Cosmote internet connection is back to normal…well, as normal as it will ever be in these parts! I had not, it turns out, used my monthly bandwidth limit. Everyone’s connection has been unconscionably slow in this area for the last week or so because of the weather — a wind that could knock you flat in a second, let alone destroy elements of the landscape like aerials.

Oriental Glimpse © Sarah Vernon

The joy of being able to create again knows no bounds. It soothes my soul. For Oriental Glimpse, I mixed and matched innumerable flower and architectural images from my collection and The Graphics Fairy along with a textured background from Denise at 2 Lil’ Owls, courtesy of a specially discounted bundle from Design Cuts.

Oriental Glimpse Tote Bag © Sarah Vernon

Oriental Glimpse Duvet Cover © Sarah Vernon

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

Take care and keep laughing!